By Binod Ghimire in Kathmandu Post, Dec 01, 2023
The Rastriya Swatantra Party has finally shown some clarity on its view of Nepal’s provincial setup, a vital cog in the new republic’s federal machinery.
A joint meeting of the party’s central committee and parliamentary party on Wednesday endorsed party chief Rabi Lamichhane’s political paper, which has proposed alternatives to the provincial mechanism. The political paper says the current provincial setup will take the country nowhere. Provinces, according to Lamichhane’s document, have turned out to be hubs of corruption and recruitment cells of political parties.
“We shouldn’t waste a moment in thinking about alternatives to the provinces. Revisiting these structures is of utmost importance,” reads the political paper.
Launched in July 2022, the party only contested the polls for the federal parliament. In the vote held on November 20 of the same year, Lamichhane was seen, in a widely circulated video, skipping voting for provincial candidates. Lamichhane had then said that his party was not taking part in the provincial elections and that he had reservations over the provincial setup.
However, some party leaders like Santosh Pariyar were heard defending federalism, including the provinces. But the three-day meeting in Jaleshwar, Mahottari endorsed Lamichhane’s anti-province line.
Mukul Dhakal, the party’s general secretary, said the Jaleshwar meeting unanimously agreed that provinces are only a burden to the state. “The provinces have turned out to be places to manage dissatisfied leaders and cadres who don’t get opportunity at the federal level,” he told the Post.
He said there could be two alternatives: first scrapping them outright or having a provision of electing one representative who can take charge of the entire province in close coordination with the federal level. “We neither need provincial assemblies nor the Cabinet,” said Dhakal, adding the party will very soon come out with its concrete vision on the issue.
Lamichhane’s political paper clearly states that the Constitution of Nepal doesn’t capture his party’s sentiment as it has a different position regarding the governance system, federal structure, size of parliament and its representation. However, it doesn’t detail what sort of changes the Rastriya Swatantra Party wants to make in the governance system, and representation in parliament.
The party aims to garner a two-thirds majority in the next elections to revise the statute as per the party line. Recalling that the party got around 70 percent votes in Chitwan, Lamichhane has said securing a two-thirds majority is possible.
Political experts, however, see the party’s revisiting of the provincial setup as unnecessary, a step that will only destabilise the country.
“Attempts are being made to destabilise the country in the name of Hindu state and monarchy. Revisiting the provincial setup will have the same effect,” Khagendra Prasai, who teaches political psychology at Nepal Open University, told the Post. “I don’t see a problem with the current federal structure.”
He said no responsible party would call for amending a constitution that has not even been tested for a decade yet. In the view of some analysts, sometimes parties, in the name of being different, carry unnecessary political lines.
“I don’t think the Swatantra Party has been able to diagnose the real problems facing the country,” Sanjeev Humagain, who teaches at Tribhuvan University, told the Post.
In his paper, Lamichhane has accused other parties of copying the RSP’s agenda of Mission 2084 [the Nepali year for next election]. He, however, also has pointed out the possibility of snap polls, saying the current level of pessimism and frustration among the people could boil over any time. “So I request our party leaders and members to be ready for that,” reads the paper.
The RSP, which was formed just a few months before last year’s elections, managed to win 20 seats, establishing itself as a dominant political force in the country. It added one more seat in the April bypolls.
The fourth largest party in the House of Representatives has decided to adopt pluralistic democracy as the party’s guiding principle. It has also embraced the policy of establishing a welfare state by mobilising resources at public, private and community levels.
https://kathmandupost.com/politics/2023/12/01/rastriya-swatantra-party-favours-doing-away-with-provinces
