Remodeling Democracy in Nepal

By Jeevan Baniya

The country already facing confrontations is also waiting for a tough fight among different political parties ahead especially on the right form of federal structure and the issue of autonomous Terai while writing a new constitution. This situation is also discussed as an opportunity to solve various other problems with the belief that, in the past, the central authorities had long dominated many of the other ethnic groups and castes of Nepal thus the federalism will remove the power from the center and a more fair distribution of opportunities and living conditions at the local level will improve. But, literatures are hardly found how and why federalism can be capitalised to solve the problems; at least, I am not assured whether the upcoming constitution can protect, promote and ensure participation and the best interests of Nepali people, for, no preparations are visible.

One thing is, however, clear that major political parties have consistently speaking about establishing sustainable peace and better form of democracy in the country through new constitution (I assume here that the Maoists will not move to one-party authoritarianism and stick to their commitments they have made towards democracy). To realise this goal first it is necessary for them to assess and evaluate why democracy couldn ’t function well in Nepal; what went wrong with it and why it is under much scrutiny. Without making unbiased and serious evaluation of already existing democracy, it can not be expected that designing right form of upcoming democratic structure is going be successful.

Nepal, which adopted western form of liberal democratic system in 1990, is standing at the historic juncture, looking for a better form of democracy. But questions regarding what, why and how a better form of democracy can be installed remain unanswered by political parties.
Samuel P. Huntington once argued that the end of the cold war seemed to create the conditions for what became known as the ‘end of history ’ and the triumph of western versions of democracy and believed that liberal democracy model will flourish given the right conditions and right implementation and timing. But, the narrow version of liberal democracy proposed by liberal perspectives in the aftermath of cold war has been under strong criticism by many social scientists. The critics claim that liberal democracy is not delivering on its ideals and therefore requires challenge. Furthermore, they argue that the democracy imported from the west is not appropriate to other cultures and societies around the world; and the same has been in the case of Nepal, on which I also share with my belief.

When we adopted liberal democracy in Nepal, we were assured that given the power of economic globalisation there is no alternative to neo-liberal markets. Bur what resulted (except some good aspects) is a low intensity democracy, and politics remained the only game in town. It can also be considered that the initial optimism with the liberal democratic project had diminished as the conflict between the government and Maoists intensified soon after the country had entered the democratic era, but only this phenomenon can not explain failure or weakness in the past.
The state failed to address the problems of poor, marginalised and indigenous groups and the power politics was scaling up without addressing the problems, there was, and still is, much skepticism about the capacity of conventional democracy to involve ordinary citizens in shaping and implementing the public policies. Our elected representatives decided everything themselves, without broader public participation on the issues related to their life and society. Interests groups prevailed rather than people in decision making process. Consequently, the issues related to equity, political autonomy, responsibility, economic opportunities remained as they were.

Of course, there are good aspects of liberal democracy such as separation of executive, legislative and judicial powers, free and fair elections and free political parties, and free association of institutions within a developing civil society. But in a country like Nepal, the very understanding of democracy should move away from democracy understood as elite power politics and should ensure popular control of public affairs on the basis of political equality for the wider interest of the marginalised people, minority groups, gender-related issue and so on.

On the one hand, we are at the time when we have to evaluate democracy in terms of policy implementation and institutional reform carried out in the past; on the other, we need to undertake an assessment whether the already existing democracy itself is appropriate for the country or if not what kind of democracy is appropriate. It is also noticeable that we are, however, not the only country readdressing ideas and form of democracy; this trend is underway in various countries in the world, which is called as rethinking or radicalising democracy.

In Nepal, it should be ensured that there is broader participation in public decision making and on the direct role of citizens on public issues so that democracy can be deliberative and sustainable. Even though our previous concerns were focused on elite power politics and issues of implementation and identification of preconditions for democracy, we hardly paid attention on ensuring maximum citizen participation on issues related to their lives. Therefore, one of the fundamental problems about democracy, development, equity and peace in the country remains on the culture of practicing democracy.

Our understanding of democracy in Nepal has mostly been conceptually and normatively limited as the focus has been on problems of implementation of democracy and on identifying the right preconditions for a specific and limited model of democracy which has led to problems over identifying correct conditions and ignoring alternative approaches to democracy. To establish the genuine democracy, our political and academic pundits had better identify the factors and dynamics of alternative tools to broaden and consolidate democracy.

Despite complexities it can be expected that a highly mobilised and active base created by People ’s Movement II can be capitalised to socialise democracy in Nepal. Now a discourse on this agenda, with participation of political actors, civil society, academia, media and other stakeholders, is essential for establishing the foundation for a genuine democracy in the country.

http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2009/others/guestcolumn/jan/guest_columns_05.php(Baniya is a research fellow at Democracy and Social Movement Institute (DaSMI) Sungkonghoe University, Seoul, South Korea. He can be reached at: baniyajeevan@hotmail.com )

This article was originally published in online news portal of nepal: www.nepalnews.com