Politics under seasoned politicos

By TNW correspondent

The next four or five years of politics will not be much different in Nepal for it will be guided by old timers particularly the known images of Nepali politics. “It will be marked by coalition, power-sharing and efforts to consolidate the democratic gains that the country made in the past decade.”

Senior politicos made the observation recently in Kathmandu as they reviewed the outcome of five national conventions of leading and small political parties in the recent past. All leftist parties – CPN UML, Maoist Centre and CPN- Marxist Leninist and Nepali Congress trusted leadership to old hands while Rastriya Prajatantra Party chose fresh leadership to bring about some sort of change in the tone and style of leadership in its political set-up.

One thread that links most of the parties in future is their commitment to the current constitution. RPP, however, has advocated revival of monarchy and discontinuation of federalism – some values which go against the current constitution.

The general mood among the leaders who got their leadership renewed recently is to go to the elections and get as many seats in parliament as possible. Most are in no way focused on making the best of remaining current parliamentary period (about one year). An indicator to this effect is: their indifference towards opposition party’s continuous disturbance in parliament as part of pressure on Speaker to take action against some parliamentarians whom CPN UML kicked out.

As the local level municipalities complete their five year term in five months and the parliament does so in 12 months, elections are to be held as per the constitutional provisions. Facing people in polls is by itself a challenge for many politicos and their political organizations in different ways.

The ruling coalition of five parties and the opposition CPN UML will have tough competition in the forthcoming polls at all levels, predict political Pundits. They will clash mainly over pursuing democratic norms or autocratic ones as they go forward implementing the provisions enshrined in the constitution, say political analysts.

Some politicos opine the ruling coalition will find it difficult to manage ambitions of Deuba, Prachanda and Nepal in the long run. They will break up compelling another sort of political coalition in the near future.”All will find it challenging to accommodate the aspirations of youths in their political parties. “

Oli will however go to the polls on his own and seek to emerge as strong as in the past. He will, however, have to struggle for this because of truncated portion of his party, which is now in the form of entirely another leftist party under the leadership of Madhav Nepal.