NEPAL’S parliament elected Sushil Koirala – a center left social democrat as its new prime minister after a last-minute power-sharing deal on Monday, report Reuters and BBC. This deal eventually ended a deadlock that had lasted since an election under a caretaker government which was in-charge of the Himalayan country for last eleven months.
Koirala, the head of the centrist Nepali Congress party, was elected with support from the communist UML party, which holds the second largest number of seats in parliament. Nepal has been running under an interim Constitution since the 2008 abolition of a centuries-old monarchy.
Koirala replaces Khil Raj Regmi, the Supreme Court Chief Justice who has headed the caretaker government since March last year. The new Prime Minister has the job of overseeing the preparation of a new Constitution now, which is one of the conditions of a 2006 peace deal that ended the decade-long Maoist war.
There are many similarities and yet paradoxes run parallel between Bangladesh and Nepal that demand serious consideration from our side. Nepal, sandwiched between India and China, has been inundated by conflict, instability and intractable political schism for years. Her two giant neighbours trying to woo the underdeveloped and destabilized country as a geo-political ally, fear prolonged turmoil could turn it into a haven for international criminal gangs, militants and traffickers. But, the recent success to reach a consensus mediated by a caretaker government is quite remarkable. Nepal has adopted and sustained the caretaker-government system at the same time when one of her next door neighbour -Bangladesh has divorced it.
But, Nepal is not in the league alone to espouse this reconciliatory interim solution lately. New York Times reported that Tunisia has adopted a Constitution under the supervision of a caretaker government on January 26. It praised the Tunisian deal as “Tunisia’s Remarkable Achievement”. The nation’s adoption of Constitution garnered unprecedented support from the ruling Islamists and opposition leftists alike after a political deadlock of months spurred by the assassination of a politician. But the technocrat caretaker government ushered this extraordinary transition. Maldives and Pakistan are two more recent examples of success story led by the caretaker government.
Here comes the critical question for us as a nation. If trouble and schism trodden nascent democracies like Nepal or Tunisia can solve their problem with the help of a caretaker government why can’t we? What essential barricade is precluding Bangladesh to get over its political uncertainty and non-functioning democracy when military-democracy of Pakistan can do it with a caretaker administration? We ask our ruling party to learn from those countries and if not, history will hold it certainly responsible for holding the nation hostage. Because history speaks for itself, it is the lesson of history.
