In Nepal crisis, India believes Centrists are key

Even a sixth round of voting for a new prime minister is unable to produce a majority consensus on anyone.

Nepal remained mired in a political deadlock that verges on a constitutional breakdown, as its 601 lawmakers were unable to elect a prime minister by simple majority in the sixth round of voting that was held in Kathmandu this afternoon
Amidst rising concern and frustration in Delhi and in several other key world capitals over Nepal’s inability to come to terms with its political future, Maoist Pushpa Kamal Dahal, commonly known as Prachanda, won 240 votes, while his Nepali Congress opponent, Ram Chandra Poudel, managed to secure only 122 votes.

Three Madhesi parties who belong to the Terai region adjoining India stayed neutral, as did the left-of-centre Communist party led by caretaker prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, the CPN-UML. A fourth Madhesi party, led by Upendra Kumar Yadav, had split from the united Madhesi alliance on the eve of the sixth round of voting, sparking rumours that he would support Prachanda in the secret ballot.

But it was a leaked audio tape three days ago about a conversation allegedly between Maoist ideologue and Krishna Bahadur Mahara and another person, said to be Chinese, in which Mahara is said to have asked the Chinese government for Nepali Rs 50 crore to buy lawmakers, that has rocked the young Himalayan republic.

As the political temperature rose in Kathmandu all week, India’s ambassador, Rakesh Sood, met CPN-UML chairman, Jhalanath Khanal, reinforcing speculation that Delhi was again seeking to broker an anti-Maoist political alliance.

On the face of it, Indian officials vehemently denied any suggestion of interfering in the Nepali political process, with Sood telling Business Standard that “Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would never allow it, he doesn’t like this kind of thing at all”.

However, Indian officials privately admitted that when Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary and a former ambassador to Nepal, travelled to Kathmandu as the PM’s special envoy last month, alongside his desire to understand the emerging political dynamics, his mandate also included the need to see whether India should “engage in any course correction”.

Saran, in fact, in his conversations with the Madhesi parties is believed to have advised them to “stay united,” leading some observers to believe that India did not want the Madhesis to “cross the floor” and vote for Prachanda to become PM, as some had done during the third round of voting.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, sources in Kathmandu and New Delhi agreed that India, as the major country in the region, “continued to play a very important role in Nepal; in fact, there can be no government in Nepal without Indian support.”

Significantly, the Indian sources agreed that New Delhi had grown increasingly uncomfortable with the Maoists in recent months, a far cry from April 2006, when Shyam Saran brokered a deal with former King Gyanendra and persuaded him to abdicate in favour of a republican government led by the Maoists.

“The Maoist refusal to transform themselves from an insurgent outfit to a political party since 2006 has meant that Delhi is increasingly uncomfortable with them,” said an Indian political source.

He pointed out that when Prachanda came to India as prime minister in 2008, he was given the full red carpet treatment. At the time, the Indian source said, the only thing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had told Prachanda was “that the matter of the Nepal army was a sensitive one and that it was in the Maoist interest to create a political consensus before he made any moves regarding the integration of the Maoist cadres into the Army”.

Prachanda had conceded, the Indian source added, “that this was a sensitive issue and that as the largest political party, it was their responsibility to take the initiative to build political consensus”.

But the Maoists had not only refused to disband the Youth Communist League, return all the property they had seized during their war against the state from 1996-2006 (“they can’t return the seized lands,” said another analyst, “they have distributed it amongst the people, who are already cultivating it”), they had even refused compromise deals to variously integrate the 19,600 cadres into the Army or paramilitary forces or send the women and children cadres back home with honourable compensation.

The China factor began to make a comeback. As Maoist ideologue Mohan Vaidya began to follow an openly anti-India line, Delhi’s insecurities against its northern neighbour returned. The Nepali army, whose chief had been sacked by Prachanda — and reinstated by President Ram Baran Yadav — began to move centre-stage in the political chaos.

A former Indian diplomat who has served in Nepal said India had made several proposals to integrate the Maoist cadres in various ways and even help with economic and political compensation during Prachanda’s tenure in power, but none of these had come to fruition.

He pointed out that the Nepal Army remained a “brother army” with the Indian army, as well as a custodian of the 1950 guarantee that Nepal would first look at India to satisfy its defence requirements, only later at the rest of the world.

Moreover, considering the nature of the open border, “Nepal needed to recognise that India’s security and stability was directly related to a peaceful and tranquil border”.

But as the Maoists gradually lost confidence in New Delhi, India moved to support Madhav Nepal as PM, persuade the Madhesis to remain united — despite which Upendra Yadav broke away. Whether or not UML chairman Jhalanath Khanal or Nepali Congress leaders Sher Bahadur Deuba or K P Oli now emerge as consensus PMs, Nepali sources said, India has already cast its vote against the Maoists.

“In Nepal,” the Indian political source said, “the Centre must hold.”

The Indian diplomat agreed the current political impasse was a function of the insecurities between all sides. “The Maoists are afraid that an effort at political consensus-making will mean the other political parties will gang up against them. The other political parties fear that if they allow the Maoists to take power again, they will not abide by their promises to return seized properties or integrate their cadres in a seemly fashion.”

Even Sitaram Yechury, whose CPI(M) had helped broker the 12-point understanding between the Maoists and Nepal’s other political parties in 2005, enabling them to come overground, expressed frustration with the political deadlock emerging from today’s sixth round of voting.

“When we played a role in bringing the Maoists and the political parties together, we told them all very clearly that the interim government could only be a transitional arrangement until the Constitution was adopted. Once that happened, elections could take place so that a new government assumed political power,” Yechury told Business Standard.

But as Yechury pointed out, the Constitution-making deadline expired on May 29, when all sides gave themselves another six months till November 29 to complete the Constitution-writing process. However, nearly three months had elapsed and none of the parties had even been able to agree on a PM.

In an effort to break this deadlock, Saran had gone to Nepal last month. But as an Indian diplomat with intimate knowledge of Saran’s visit said, “all the political parties Saran met had one request, please help us to become Prime Minister of Nepal”.