Gyanendra’s men try to fix a broken Humpty-dumpty

KATHMANDU: In the wee hours of Wednesday several jeep-loads of heavily armed policemen arrived at the residence of former Nepalese prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. He was packed into one of the vehicles and driven away — arrested on charges of corruption.

As the police jeeps drove away with the former prime minister, it became clear just how polarised Nepal has become over the issue of corruption, especially after King Gyanendra dismissed the Deuba government on Feb 1 and seized complete political power.

Corruption was once the biggest issue worrying Nepali voters. But today, it has been turned into a politically charged issue — thanks to the machinations of the new autocratic regime. In its zeal to only charge democratic politicians for corruption and abuse of authority, the regime has ironically managed to create the inevitable impression that it is settling old scores.

“People today have a lot of sympathy for these politicians even if they are corrupt because the government has mishandled the issue,” said Ram Sharma (name changed), a political analyst with a donor agency in Kathmandu. “They (the royal regime) have shown a remarkable lack of political acumen while pursuing these cases.”

No one doubts that Nepal’s politicians deserve the attention of anti-corruption agencies. No one, not even politicians, deny that the freewheeling democratic years from 1990 to 2002 were characterized by massive corruption in government ranks.

Leaders who were voted into office because of their honest and simple lifestyles were soon driving expensive Pajero jeeps in a matter of years. Leftover cash was invested in major private businesses away from the prying eyes of the public.

A poll funded by the US-based National Democratic Institute late last year found that most Nepalis were deeply concerned by corruption issues and wanted political parties to deal with it effectively. But the parties dithered, afraid that tackling corrupt leaders would fracture the whole multi-party democratic process.

But after he seized power, King Gyanendra had no such concerns.

Announcing corruption as one of the major scourges, he formed a Royal Corruption Control Commission (RCCC) in February, just after seizing absolute power. The all-powerful RCCC has the mandate to probe, prosecute and sentence offenders — a power so great that it turns natural justice on its head, legal experts allege.

In a remarkable lack of political sense, the king packed the commission with old royal hands who had served in an era of absolute monarchy started by Gyanendra’s father — King Mahendra — in 1960. That era was dismantled by a popular movement in 1990, when pro-democracy demonstrators forced Gyanendra’s brother — King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah — to relegate his authority to that of a constitutional monarch.

Nonetheless, all the gains made in 1990 were dismantled by the royal coup on Feb 1. One of the RCCC’s first task was to probe financial improprieties in the last Deuba government. Several ministers were summoned, questioned and released on bail for disbursing public funds to political activists last year during the holy Dasain festival, which falls in autumn. Allegedly, all the former ministers who gave out the money happened to belong to democratic political parties.

Then the RCCC put its hands in a controversial drinking water project - the 464 million dollar Melamchi drinking water project — financed, among others, by the Asian Development Bank (AsDB).

Early this month, it summoned Prakash Man Singh, a former minister for physical planning and leader of Deuba’s Nepali Congress (Democratic), to answer why he had cancelled an old contract to build a 23-kilometre road leading to the project site and given it to a Chinese-Nepali joint venture instead. Singh refused to appear before the RCCC.

“This is a political witch hunt,” Singh said early last week. “The decision was made in accordance with the law and there is no corruption involved. Besides, I refuse to appear before a commission which is unconstitutional.” That got him into jail. Late last week, after the deadline for him to appear before the RCCC expired, police swiftly bundled Singh into a van from his house and threw him in a lockup. The RCCC has extended his detention by seven more days to finish its investigation.

Deuba’s arrest will be at a huge political cost to the RCCC. That is because of the public’s perception that the royal commission is being used as political tool to settle old scores. “No one says our politicians are clean. But so is the case with the king’s supporters. They did more corruption during the 30-year rule under absolute monarchy than these guys. Why does not the RCCC go after them?” asks Bikram Lama, a taxi driver in Kathmandu.

The Asian Development Bank itself has further bolstered the politicians’ case. ‘The Kathmandu Post’ newspaper reported on Tuesday that AsDB officials had themselves approved of the contractor change in the Melamchi drinking water project.

“The approval was undertaken according to AsDB procedures,” the newspaper reported a bank official as saying. The previous contract was cancelled, the official was quoted as saying, “due to gross under-performance.” The RCCC has yet to react to the AsDB’s claims, but the damage has been done.

Also, it does not help that the RCCC is openly encroaching into a jurisdictional area of the constitutionally empowered Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA). Officials there privately lament the RCCC’s role and say the royal body is giving a bad name to the anti-corruption investigations.

“Even in those cases we’re looking after, the RCCC has interfered in. But what can we do? It is the king’s commission and he is all-powerful,” decries a CIAA investigating officer.

But the RCCC has given every indication that it doesn’t give a damn.

On April 21, it issued fresh orders to Nepal’s banks to furnish the financial records of over 100 selected politicians and bureaucrats. None of those names belong to loyal royals.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.

Looking issues in the eye

THE courage to look at issues straight in the eye and the resolve to settle them “sincerely and purposefully” aptly sums up the result of the Musharraf-Manmohan Singh summit (April 16-18) in New Delhi. Both the leaders’ body and spoken languages blended together beautifully to leave the people — on each side —- hoping for the best.

President Musharraf held “mutual intransigence” responsible for ‘delaying’ a resolution of issues over the past five plus decades. Sharing the responsibility for all the failures and deadlocks in the peace process underscored a qualitative departure from the old habit of simply shifting the blame to the other to end the argument for want of a better argument.

The Agra summit in 2001 appeared to be sailing smoothly, but was suddenly foundering on the rocks of “mutual intransigence”. India wouldn’t recognize Kashmir as the core issue while Pakistan would insist on that phraseology as an essential part of the solution. Neither side was willing to yield an inch to accommodate the other. Most sorrowfully, this happened when the world media had already announced that the final draft of the joint statement was ready for signatures.

Other factors contributing to the failure of the Agra summit were the back-door manoeuvrings of PM Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP hard-liners who eventually wrecked the conference. A roughly scripted statement read by BJP information minister, Sushma Swaraj, challenged the status of Kashmir as a flashpoint. Ms Swaraj’s PR coup in pre-empting the formal announcement and signing of the joint declaration appeared to have enjoyed full backing of two BJP stalwarts and cabinet ministers, L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh. It was on the whole viewed as a triumph of the BJP’s radical fringe over the mature and effective conduct of the summit by Mr Vajpayee.

The statement elicited a swift and furious response from the Pakistani side. Just a couple of hours before his departure from Agra, President Musharraf summoned a press conference to give vent to his strong feelings over the summit’s failure due to the Indian intransigence. India is now wiser after the event.

This time round, Foreign Minister Natwar Singh in a comprehensive pre-summit press interview said that his government would not “repeat the mistakes made at the Agra summit”. The NDA (BJP’s coalition government of National Democratic Alliance) was “ill-prepared to walk into the summit.”

At the New Delhi summit, neither did India shirk discussing the Kashmir issue ‘threadbare’ nor did Pakistan refer to Kashmir as the ‘unfinished agenda of partition’. Thus, by trading mutual flexibility for mutual (or one-sided) intransigence, the path was paved for the summit’s success, exceeding everybody’s expectations.

Even in his arrival statement in New Delhi, President Musharraf spoke of a ‘huge constituency of goodwill’ on both sides. The cause for optimism was much greater when compared to the environment in Agra.

Apart from the long list of every conceivable issue discussed and defined for an amicable settlement over time, one witnessed an unprecedented show of resolve on both sides to dispose of the crushing baggage of history. Third-generation Indians and Pakistanis do not want to put the future at risk for the faults and failings of the past and they seek peace with dignity. Within their secure borders, India and Pakistan must collaborate in their own national interest and for the collective good of the region or continue to suffer.

President Musharraf was the first to have used the expression “fairly irreversible” in respect of Indo-Pakistan peace. As a soldier and a realist given to real politick, he would not have used the phrase simply as a rhetorical expression. Indeed, the on-going peace process having trickled to the level of the masses can only be reversed at the risk of yet another era of high tension and war talk which neither country can afford. A nuclear South Asia cannot be left to its own devices to pose a threat to global security. The region has been under the critical gaze of world powers, chiefly the US, for any move that might upset the balance of power.

Peace, therefore, is not just a requirement for bilateral harmony and prosperity but also an essential condition for the protection of national sovereignty. It is a protective shield against foreign intervention, overt or covert.

In the joint statement read out by Dr Manmohan Singh, the two leaders determined that the peace process was now “irreversible”. They addressed the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in “this spirit” and “agreed” to continue their discussions in a “sincere and purposeful way” and a forward-looking manner for a final settlement.

The two leaders “assessed” the progress already made and agreed to “build on the momentum achieved” through confidence-building people-to-people contact and “enhancing areas of interactions.” They agreed on a wide spectrum of vital points ranging from trade, the Khokhrapar-Munabao route by January 2006, opening consulates in Mumbai and Karachi by end of the year and talks on Siachin, Sir Creek and Baghliar Dam.

Yet another decision taken on the spot, relating to the emotive issue of the transfer of Jinnah House (currently owned by the Indian government) to Pakistan for the purpose of housing its consulate-general, was no mean achievement in its own right. An issue which had been hanging fire ever since 1947 did not take a minute or two to resolve. Dr Manmohan Singh ordered its transfer to Pakistan as soon as President Musharraf mentioned it.

In conclusion, New Delhi represented summitry at its best. The journey from hard to soft borders has begun. It is bound to have its unavoidable ups and downs. However, once the process has got underway, it should be allowed to go on. The product can wait.

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army.