Nepal’s Political Parties: Areas Requiring Reforms

Areas Requiring Reforms

Congruence between Constitutional Vision and Party Manifesto: Congruity of party programs with the spirit of constitution fosters a culture of consensus and prevents polarization both at the national and party level and thwarts extra-constitutional and anti-systemic tendencies. There is a need to enthuse in the party a listening culture—listening to the voices of local cadres of parties, ordinary supporters and even broad mass who can become potential supporters in the future. Civil society institutions should provide alternative ideas and autonomous leaders who can speak out against the unconscionable behavior of incumbent elites.

Minimize Extra-Party, Extra-Parliamentary and Extra-Constitutional Political Participation: The power-centric approach of mainstream leaders devoid of democratic culture has fostered the role of non-political, anti-political and armed non-state actors. Imposition of election candidates from above has bred not only factionalism but also bureaucratic tendency among leaders. The selection of candidates by local party committees by majority is central to make it transparent and exercise the constitutional right to information. Political participation through extra—political channels such as civil society, media, professional groups, primordial associations and non-state actors is growing. In contrast, open communication between the party and society has been reduced to elections, social movements and agitation. The old ways of one leader and many cadres communication has shifted to many leaders and many cadres communication. This old style that served the party well in a vertical chain through "narrow elite base" is now fiercely contested by horizontal series of groups. Nepalese parties are seeking to reform themselves from "group-enclosed" nature to open, transparent and responsive institutions as they move into the future. This is important to increase party's internal ability for competition and politicization of the people into civic culture.

Maximize Social Responsiveness and Accountability: In NC 50 percent of central committee (CC) and other party committees of various hierarchies are nominated by the party president so far. The executive committee does not have any decision making rights in the NC. The president has veto power. The local party committees are only the command receiving subordinate bodies. Its Mahasamiti meeting in November 2009 has, however, endorsed a provision to elect 75 percent members in the 85-member CC. Now, the president can nominate only 21 members from among women, Dalits, indigenous groups, Madhesi and Muslim communities. The party president can appoint three office bearers-vice president and two joint general secretaries with the approval of CC. The new statute also ensured election of 14 central members from each zone. In CPN-UML only 5 percent elected convention members are nominated by CC. The elected CC can nominate 15 percent of the elected members. The CC also nominates some members of zonal committee. District committee, electoral constituency coordination committee and Ilaka committee have to get approval of its decisions from super ordinate committees. All the vacant seats are filled as per the direction from above. The formation of party committee is associated with leadership selection. The level of mutual respect requires a sense of equality between leaders and cadres. The UCPN (Maoist) and newly emerged parties are struggling to democratize party structures and various committees in a more inclusive way. Inner-party democracy strengthens the responsiveness of parties towards "functional groups" in society, enables the party organization to become flexible for cooperation with actors from diverse civil society and prevents them from becoming exclusively authoritarian, government-oriented and statist. In normative terms, intra-party democracy is essential for the acceptance of ideology, civic and moral renewal of organization, policy and personnel choices as well as to tie the parties with the lives and hopes of each generation of citizens. The inner party democracy also does one symbolic duty as it increases international legitimacy of parties.

Increase Representation of Social Diversity: Iner-party democracy beefs up the internal coherence between leaders and cadres, dynamism and deliberation of party rank and file and minimizes the degree of factionalism, conflict and split that often threatens the very identity of party. Social representation of diversity in the party structures enables them to capture the diverse space of society, deepens party's organizational roots and fosters both social integration among various people in equal terms and system integration with the institutions of governance. This is important to override all sub-national loyalties to the loyalty to national polity and people can find a sense of justice in democracy and its infrastructures, such as political parties and civil society. The stake for the democratization of Nepalese parties is growing higher with the mobilization of consciousness of people by primordial traditional groups and rational civil society and offering alternative channels for aggregation, articulation and communication of public interests.

Balance between Political Institutionalization and Participation: In Nepal, the stake for the democratization of the internal life of parties has never been so high now than in the comparable period of the nation's history. Mass mobilization of people and the rise of the level of mass consciousness following Constituent Assembly (CA) elections are challenging both hereditary, traditional bureaucratic and gerentocratic privileges of leaders for elected, young, rational and dynamic ones. There is a need for the parties to expand the institutional domain to absorb newly

mobilized social groups and prevent political decay caused by high participation and low institutionalization of political process. Voice for inclusion and more democracy is becoming louder and louder in the rank and file of political workers as they also demand the principle of subsidiarity in leadership selection and recruitment of party officials from the diverse life of society. Democracy entails participation and shared responsibility, not exclusive dependence of citizens on leader to solve their entire problems.

Politics of Negotiation and Compromise, Not Negation and Confrontation: The Nepalese political parties need to abolish the politics of negation in favor of negotiation and avoid personal attacks to sideline issues that turn citizens' attention away from real challenges to their life, liberty and property. It presupposes the role of civil society and media in communicating common ground, connecting political parties and formulating realistic agenda for consensus on common issues. They should also help leaders overcome their attitude anaesthetized by media entertainment. The party conventions should provide them sufficient opportunity for discussion on basic issues such as public security, food, health, education, sanitation, irrigation, management of local resources, etc of local importance so that trusts of grassroots people will increase for the district and central party leaders. The politics of negation should be applied to the corrupt, criminal, authoritarian and anti-social elements seeking to capture party leadership through undemocratic means.

Equilibrium between Individual Rights, Group Rights and Human Rights:  Recently, in Nepal, too-much party-mindedness stimulated the people to fight for group rights than exclusively individual freedom. The CA has increased the representation of five groups of people— Dalits, ethnic groups and indigenous people, Madhesis, women and backward regions. For many of these groups, agitations have become a convenient tool to be heard and heeded to and break group enclosed leadership culture and excessive party mindedness. This has made difficult to de-link politics from violence and strategy to liberate the oppressed through reformist measures. The Interim Constitution has expanded social rights of people including cultural and language rights beyond the capacity of the state to fulfill them. All communities must have the right to express their identity, so the new constitution will be obliged to guarantee them. But the division of political power along ethnic lines is a risky strategy for conflict-resolution as modern politics is rooted in ideology rather than biology. It is relatively easy to resolve ideological and interest-based conflict through understanding and negotiation but ethnic conflict has the propensity to become emotionally charged which negates the existence of the other and respect other's legitimate interests. The direct violence and recent ethnic and political agitation have been causing economic paralysis and constraining the nation's move towards a stable democracy that can deliver development and peace.

Mechanism of Conflict Resolution: All the major parties of Nepal are suffering from internal frictions due to a manifest gap between their ideologies and the reality of performance. They are also encountering the post-conflict challenges from new parties such as Madhesi Jana Adhikar Forum (MJAF), MJAF (Democratic), Tarai-Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP), Sadbhavana Party, civil society, media, distributional social movement and 109 non-state armed actors. Political leaders must acknowledge the problems of society, find common ground and democratize further by opening the parties to diverse perspectives of society for deliberation, synthesize the contesting vision clearly into a national framework and negotiate a new social contract, a workable constitution as soon as possible. Communication at various levels of leadership, culture of deliberation in committees, management of dissenting voice, evaluation of cadres and leaders and rebuilding broken relationship are essential to mitigate conflict. Otherwise, the politicization of ethnicity, caste, class and territoriality will weaken the parties, inspire the leaders to unprincipled competition than certain degree of consensus and suffer from fundamentalist gap, polarization and deadlock. In the party rank and file it is essential to address genuine demands, capture the resilience of Nepali society, foster the unity and harmony between groups and promote system's capacity to adapt to the demands of "public opinion." An inter-party conflict resolution mechanism is, therefore, needed to confine the parties to "political sphere" of policy and law-making with the desire of supporting citizens' initiatives and steer the country in a clear constitutional direction.

Incubation of Civic Culture: Factionalism, split, leader for life, dominance of hereditary elements, social and gender bias and vertical patron-client relationship characterize the political culture of Nepalese political parties. The

generational and gender gap in the leadership especially of second and third generation failed to attract the aspiration and commitment of youth in the party. The remedy is the decentralization of structural set up of parties to expand the social base of parties and make leadership selection inclusive. Similarly, there is also a need for the party to look for leaders who can inspire vision and sustainable change than the father figures (patriarch) who fear change including the change of leadership. The coming battles among the factions of various parties' for leadership will inspire democratic selection of leaders in the future through electoral means than charisma and tradition.

Posted on : 2010-06-23 06:45:29

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