Why NCP's Split is a bad idea for the factions and the country at large?

There were the hopes of political stability after the now-merged Nepal Communist Party(NCP) won the general election in 2017 with almost a two-thirds majority. However, the internal conflict of Nepal Communist Party(NCP) is at its peak and the signs are telling that the NCP might collapse in the weight of its own success. Should that happen, the split would mean that the NCP fails to rescue the country out of political instability and fails to stand up to the expectations of the left-leaning populace. On top of that, the split would also be a blow to some of the progressive agendas and the promise of "Happy Nepalese and Prosperous Nepal" championed by the communist-led leftist government.

 

Nepalese politics has witnessed the series of political upheavals after the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990. After failing to manage the intra-party political disputes and to control the corruption and mal-governance, the prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala called for the mid-term election in 1994, three years in to the government. The politics of Nepal took a bumpy journey ever since and the current political development surrounding NCP interestingly shares the same crossroads Girija Prasad Koirala faced in 1994. 

Picture Credit: myRepublica

Nepal saw twenty-two different governments, majority of those lasting for less than a year, in a span of twenty-four years from 1994 to the 2018. The political instability coupled with the failure to deliver the public expectation made a way for a 10-year-long Maoist insurgency beginning in 1996 which took 16000 lives and a soft coup from the then King Gyanendra in 2005. It seemed all rosy after the Maoists joined the peace process in 2006 and after the people's mass revolution established the country as a federal democratic republic. However, it took two rounds of elections for constitution assembly to finally deliver the contentious constitution after much deliberation for 7 years. 

 

The NCP leadership should critically look at the critical juncture of 1994 which paved the way for decades of instability. The split of NCP, at this point, would risk the party of instigating another round of instability in the country through destabilization of the executive branch of the government in the central and provincial governments.   

 

NCP has an almost two-third majority in the parliament. On close inspection though, the voter base of the closest rival Nepali Congress and the larger party of the coalition, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) (CPN(UML)), is almost even. CPN(Maoist Center) and CPN(UML) ran on the banner of left alliance and brought forward a common candidate for the First Past the Poll(FPTP) seats. Even though the parties brought the common candidates for FPTP seats, they vouched for proportionate seats separately. The total votes garnered by the then CPN (UML) in the proportionate system is only 0. 47 percent more than that of the closest rival Nepali Congress, while the same of the then CPN Maoist (Center) is about 19 percent less than that of the Nepali Congress. The left alliance, which later merged to become NCP, won 70 percent of the First Past the Poll(FPTP) seats because their candidates amassed all the left-leaning votes for the first time, in a country with a majority leftist leaning. 

Picture Credit: Nepali Times

 

As such, irrespective of the faction the NCP might be split, there is a high possibility that split parties will be pushed to second, third, or fourth place in the upcoming election. Consequently, this communist government will be the first and the last time the communist party enjoys the unrivaled share of the power in all levels of government. The split of NCP would also mean that the communists lose their unrivaled hold in the six provinces in which they hold the power. 

 

The next general election is at least two and a half years away. The split, now, would mean that the next government will be a coalition government as no single party would have the majority in the parliament to form the government. There used to a joke about that the Nepalese governments that these came with an expiration date of nine months. Now that article 100 of the Nepalese Constitution prohibits the vote of no-confidence for two years after a government is formed, we may see a two-year-tenured government as a new normal. 

 

The leaders of the heavy-weights filled NCP started political fidgeting to gain the power or to bargain for the power as soon as the Oli-led government marked its second year on April 15 this year. This observation now begs the question if the party-merger was an ideological unity or was staged just for political leverage. As mentioned above, the NCP leaders must heed the patterns of political history post-1990 and make decisions keeping the interest of the country at its crux.

 

Nepalese people want the government to address the day to day expectations of the people such as proper response to COVID-19, more jobs, higher wages, better roads, transparency, accountability, rule of law, good governance, and affordable cost of living. We are convinced that institutional or government change, as we have seen in last twenty-five years, do not help much to meet those expectations. NCP must solve its internal matters democratically, work diligently to meet the day-to-day expectations, and make an effort not to disappoint the Nepalese populace again.  

 

The article was originally published in The Diplomat on August 5, 2020.