New Power Equation and the NC’s Misery

 Is Girija Prasad Koirala inside Nepali congress or Nepali Congress inside Girija Prasad Koirala? This question is currently agitating the minds of many in the Congress party. They had been in the party because of their commitment to democracy and its ideals and they wanted to articulate it in an organized way. But many are not willing to accept the way he thinks and what he has been demonstrating - GPK is Congress and Congress is GPK.

By Basanta Lohani

The Madhav Nepal government, under the leadership of Girijababu, is deliberately made a lame duck. The three-member cabinet has remained incomplete since May 25 because of internal conflict of the three major parties in sharing ‘state resources’. The prime minister perhaps does not know when his coalition government will be complete as he has to expand his cabinet by installments. Girijababu maneuvered all this time to induct his ‘irately ambitious’ daughter in the cabinet from NC quota.

Sujata had lost the last election. But that is not relevant as the one who had lost in two places in the same election is the prime minister of the country. What is relevant is Girijababu’s success in making Sujata a minister, as it appears. It has paved way for there more from other two parties – UML and MJF - to become ministers. Anyway, this installment seems to be complete. Nothing wrong as people pay by installments and live by installments.

Nepali Congress now seems to be bracing for a disaster. We all know this could eventually complicate matters in other parties and the very fate of this government could be at peril. One fine morning, disgruntled MJF members could withdraw support culminating in the fall of the government. Something like this happened to Girijababu himself when he refused ‘amicable and just settlement’ to share ‘state resources’ with Bamdev Gautam’s breakaway party, ML, in 1998. He instantly went for the dissolution of the House of Representatives. But this time nobody has this kind of option.

Is Girija Prasad Koirala inside Nepali congress or Nepali Congress inside Girija Prasad Koirala? This question is currently agitating the minds of many in the Congress party. They had been in the party because of their commitment to democracy and its ideals and they wanted to articulate it in an organized way. But many are not willing to accept the way he thinks and what he has been demonstrating - GPK is Congress and Congress is GPK.

Voices have become loud inside NC against the lack of democracy in the party itself that champions the cause of democracy. A party plagued by this sheer contradiction talks unceasingly about the lofty democratic ideals to the people. This is the mockery of democracy more than the champions who looted the national coffer with impunity. Girijababu surely is a leader who excelled in it.

“Girija Prasad Koirala has the capacity even to burn his own house if he is threatened to move out of it. Like Koirala who has the uncanny ability of creating problem for himself, Deuba’s ability is first to plunge into action and then think later.” This is from my own piece titled Girija’s political waterloo? published on December 15, 1998 in The Kathmandu Post. These two split the party and again came together. If anyone has done greater damage to Nepali Congress, it is these two. They have come in a collision course this time. Sujata is the case in point.

Deuba is to become the next president of NC in exchange of making Sujata the team leader of Nepali Congress ministers in Madhav Nepal’s coalition government. Dhritarastra’s blind attachment towards his son Duryodhana finally led to the Great War in Kuruchhetra called Mahabharata. Girijababu has lost all his sense of discretion when it has come to his daughter. All we can say is that the countdown of the government has already begun. The burden of all this will finally come to the people the way we are made to bear. An alarmingly precarious situation is ahead indeed!

(Lohani is a Kathmandu based writer. He can be reached at: bklohani@hotmail.com)