The daughter's father

Himal Southasian October 2009

When Ram Chandra Poudel became Parliamentary Party (PP) leader of the Nepali Congress in June, beating Sher Bahadur Deuba in elections, a new hope had dawned among the party’s so called second-generation leaders like Poudel and Prakash Man Singh and among younger leaders in their 30s and 40s, who have been struggling to make their way up in the party ranks. For, the defeat of Deuba was seen as the defeat of Girija Koirala: the latter had promised Deuba his support in return for support to Sujata Koirala as leader of the Congress’ ministerial team in government. At last, it was thought, the party would be liberated from the stifling dictates of the elder Koirala and a style of politics that prioritized back-room dealings and intrigue. The PP elections instead would pave the way for a politics of open debate and competition, which would energize the party and enable younger leaders to gain more of a voice.

Even before Deuba’s loss in the PP election, it appeared that Koirala’s glory days were over. He had played almost no part in the series of attacks, counterattacks and negotiations over the Maoists’ attempt to sack the Army chief between March and May. Although he was successful in influencing the party to make his daughter leader of the ministerial delegation the Congress would be sending to government, he was largely isolated when the Maoist-led government collapsed and a coalition led by the CPN-UML replaced it.

But Girijababu gradually started making his presence felt again. He entered into private negotiations with Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal regarding the possibility of replacing the current government with a new one that included the Maoists or, if this was not possible, the formation of a High Level Committee – consisting of the three top leaders of the three major parties – that would address outstanding issues of the peace process and plant the seed for the downfall of the UML-led coalition. Fear and panic arose among the other leaders of the Congress, who believed deeply that the Maoists had to be kept out of power for as long a time as possible. Then, earlier this month, GPK successfully pressured Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal into appointing daughter Sujata as deputy prime minister, even as most of the party’s top leadership voiced vehement opposition to this move.

The mood within the party following the appointment has been one of deep gloom. Not only did the party president appoint someone widely regarded as incompetent and undeserving to such a high position, the party body could do nothing but stand impotently by as he did so. It was revealed that when push came to shove, the elder Koirala still held all the cards. It is an indication of the pathos of the Nepali Congress that while not a single day has gone by since the appointment when a party leader hasn’t bitterly criticized either Sujata Koirala or the prime minister, not a single leader has yet been able to publicly criticize GPK. His persona is still too intimidating for even the Congress’ top leaders to launch frontal attacks against.

This is not to say that there haven’t been stirrings among the party body to assert itself against the grand old man. There was talk for some days of withdrawing the entire Nepali Congress ministerial delegation from government in protest. Instead of focusing on preparations for the party’s General Assembly scheduled for March 2010, there is an insistence that a meeting of the party’s Grand Committee be held in November. The point of the meeting is presumably to begin discussions regarding amendment to the party’s statute to significantly clip the president’s powers so that GPK will not be able to take such unilateral decisions in the future.

But these discussions too are unlikely to lead to any major change in the party’s positions or method of functioning. The Nepali Congress can hardly afford to withdraw support to the current government. For, that would happen only at the expense of the party’s strategy to keep the Maoists out of government and thus weaken them. Then, no matter what decisions are taken at the Grand Committee meeting, it is unlikely that they will lead to any diminishment of GPK’s power. His hold over the party, after all, does not lie in the power the party’s rules grant the president. It lies in his persona and his cultivation over decades of individuals and networks. Sujata had a point when she said that it made no sense for other Congress leaders to criticize her for being personally appointed by her father, for all of them too owed their positions due to the direct influence of the old man.

There is also unlikely to be any major difference in the way the Nepali Congress acts in government. The party has always had a loose and diffuse structure. Its ministers have, since the formation of the new government in May, followed paths of their own choosing, with little or no directives from the party. This happened even as Sujata was supposedly the leader of all Congress ministers, and this will continue even as she has become deputy prime minister.

If anything, the sense of rage that the party leadership is consumed by, and the sense of impotence that has arisen due to the knowledge that it won’t be able to meaningfully assert itself against Koirala’s dominance, can only contribute to a further weakening of the party. Sujata’s appointment has eroded the party’s confidence that it can in fact institutionalize open debate and due process within the party. In the absence of any action that can give the party a sense of direction and purpose, destructive feelings of acrimony and recrimination directed against the Koirala father and daughter seem set to persist. And this can only be at the expense of the party’s ability to create a meaningful strategy to leverage the party’s strengths in negotiations with the other political parties, not least the Maoists.

As for GPK, it has long been clear that he is no longer much concerned with the future of the party to which he has given his entire life. The conventional narrative in Kathmandu is that like Dhritarashtra, he has become blind in his old age. Consumed completely with furthering the career of his offspring, he can no longer see the broader picture. He is unaware of the threat the Maoists pose – to democracy and the survival of the Nepali Congress – and of the necessity of waging struggle against this threat.

But this is to underestimate the wiles of the old man. Those who have been around him for the past few months know that he knows perfectly well where the Congress is headed. He is not blind; he has only become detached from concerns regarding the future and survival of his party. Having brought in the Maoists from the wilderness, he feels that they are set to dominate Nepali politics in the days to come. And his final task in his six-decade long political career, he thinks, is to facilitate the transition of the Maoists into power while avoiding any violence that might arise in the process. And if, alongside, he can aid the political rise of his daughter, he will do what he can to help her.