Priminister Sher Bhadur Deuba: Accept peoples’ mandate and stop making mockery of democratic norms and values :Gopi Upreti

इनेप्लिज २०७४ पुष २ गते २:०१ मा प्रकाशित

Priminister, Sher Bahadur Deuba, despite suspicion and uncertainty, successfully conducted the historic national and provincial elections for which he deserves appreciation and congratulation.  It was not an ordinary periodic election, it was the first ever to be conducted the historic election for the implementation of the newly promulgated constitution of Nepal. This was an opportunity for him to dispel the stigma attached to him from his past deeds and he certainly succeeded in doing so. Notwithstanding the precarious situation and despite his own ambivalence, he conducted this historic election that is going to have far-reaching political ramification in the country.  On the facebook, I congratulated him with a long positive note and my FB friends might have noted that. For this historic deed, history will certainly give credit to Sher Bahadur Deuba and Nepali Congress (NC).

In the election, Nepali Congress certainly did not perform well and election results unequivocally speak for this. The results are all out and they are before everybody and do not require any analysis as to which party alliance got the overwhelming mandate of the people. In democracy, it is an established practice and precedent that the sitting prime minister or the president, after losing the election, are automatically relegated to a caretaker status from that of executive status until the formation of new government. They do not engage in the making of executive decisions that can have policy implication and far-reaching repercussion simply because they do not have the mandate of the people.  The political morality warrants that they resign from their post and facilitate the formation of the new government. What is happening in Nepal now is just the opposite.

Sher Bahadur Deuba has not yet resigned from his post and all indicators point to the fact that he wants to protract and cling to the power as much as he can and engage in selling and buying contracts (one example: the police ammunition buying contract worth 40 million USD) for the lucrative commission. It has been alleged that he is notoriously worst known figure in Nepali Congress for all kinds of hanky-panky immoral deeds and his past deeds very much attest to these allegations.

Another equally annoying and morally repulsive ill motive is his intention to appoint the governors in the seven provinces. He does not seem to have any moral qualm in doing so nor does anyone in Nepali Congress have any objection to do so. You lost the mandate of the people and you still want to make political appointments. Even if Sher Bahadur Deuba appoints somebody in these positions, the persons of moral conscience should not and will not accept such appointments. What could be a more vulgar display of the mockery of the democratic norms and values than this especially from a party that has always boasted to be the vanguard of the democratic norms and values?

Another indication of his ill motive behind this protraction is the ordinance he tabled in the office of president pertaining to the election of the national assembly. The constitutionalists argue that that ordinance is unconstitutional pertaining to the election of the national assembly and the president should reject this ordinance on the ground of its unconstitutionality. That is also the constitutional duty of the president. This ordinance has no bearing on the formation of the new government as the constitution clearly stipulates that the leader of a political party or the alliance of political parties who can command the support of the majority of the parliamentarians or the leader of the party that has the largest number of parliamentarians can form the government.

What Sher Bahadur Deuba and Nepali Congress are doing now clearly vindicates the fact that they can trample upon people’s mandate, erode all established democratic norms and values, cling to the power by any means and conduct “loot-tantra” under the banner of “look-tantra” and they are free to do so because they are Nepali Congress, the vanguard of democracy. What a tragedy?  If they continue to behave like this, only God can save Nepali Congress from becoming a party of political thugs.

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