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NEPAL: A Sliver of Silver in Cloudy Skies

Analysis by Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Oct 20 2005 (IPS) - Nepal’s strongman King Gyanendra named dates for elections earlier this month-and then enacted a law that hamstrings journalists’ reporting of politics.

After he axed his appointed government and began ruling with a handpicked council Feb. 1, the monarch pledged to hand back power in three years.

Slated for 2007, one year earlier than stipulated, the parliamentary polls announced just before the biggest annual festival, Dasain, could have been read as a positive sign in this nation whose people are desperately searching for hope.

Nepali politics have been polarised between the palace and protesting political parties since February and for almost 10 years the population has been tormented by a bloody Maoist uprising that has left 12,000, mostly innocent villagers, dead.

But any hope that the election news would be a step toward reconciliation was killed by an ordinance the king ordered to reform media laws. Besides banning negative news about political parties, the ordinance:

– broadens the prohibition on negative reporting of the king to include the entire royal family;

– prohibits one company from operating the three types of media -newspapers, radio and television – a move seen here as aimed at the outspoken pro-democracy Kantipur media group;

– legislates a ban on news broadcasts on FM radio;

– gives the government appointed Press Council authority to cancel the accreditation of journalists who violate ‘media guidelines’, and;

– criminalises all press offences, hiking penalties for violations ten-fold.

”It’s very difficult to see anything positive that this regime has done, including the announcement of the elections…You cannot talk about elections and enact the press ordinance at the same time,” says Devendra Raj Panday, coordinator of the Citizen’s Movement for Democracy and Peace (CMDP).

In recent months his group has held numerous peaceful gatherings in the capital Kathmandu and beyond that have attracted thousands of people to protest King Gyanendra’s takeover.

Like many people here, Panday, a former bureaucrat in the pre-democratic Panchayat system, believes the king’s recent moves have deep roots.

”This was coming, not only Feb. 1 but October 2002 (when the king dismissed the elected government). Many of us felt then that he was trying to move along the Musharraf path,” Panday told IPS, referring to Pakistani army chief Pervez Musharraf who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999 and named himself president two years later.

King Gyanendra’s ‘palace coup’ was punctuated by the cutting of all telephone lines in this country that borders India to the south, east and west and China to the north. It ushered in a three-month state of emergency during which hundreds of journalists, activists or those simply suspected of dissent were tossed in jail and others were banned from travelling abroad or within Nepal.

The lifting of the emergency unlocked the prison doors for many detainees, lighting another candle of hope that the monarch was poised to return power to the people but since then his council has passed or proposed other ordinances steeling the government’s grip on society.

The Social Welfare Council, previously empowered to ”extend support” to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) only is now authorised to supervise their activities and has developed a code of conduct to do that.

Nepal’s representative in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a news release Oct. 5 the code ”would introduce constraints on the membership, objectives, programming, functioning access to funding and affiliations of national and international organisations…incompatible with international human rights standards”.

Proposed changes to labour laws would also strengthen the government’s hand. Among other things they would allow authorities to designate some industries as ‘order based’, where workers would not be considered employees, permit employers to retrench workers with 15 days notice and increase the probation period for new employees.

”I wouldn’t want to look at any of these steps that the king has taken in an isolated manner,” said Panday, who threw away his government career to join the People’s Movement that won multiparty democracy on the streets in 1990.

”You have to look at them in a composite way: what are his motives, what is he trying to do, what kind of regime is he running, what kind of people does he have with him?”

He ”wants to centralise all the power in the royal palace”, he added.

The only recent good news, according to Panday, is the unilateral three-month ceasefire announced by the Maoists on Sep. 3. The government refused to join it, saying the rebels cannot be trusted.

But even the ceasefire is a half-victory: the number of killings has since dropped but Maoists continue kidnapping students and teachers for ‘education’ sessions and extorting ‘taxes’ from villagers. Soldiers have taken advantage of the relative calm to attack unarmed rebels or suspected Maoists.

In his pre-Dasain announcement King Gyanendra also set the date for municipal polls-Feb. 8. The major political parties have already vowed to boycott those elections unless the government restores the dissolved legislature.

This week the parties announced they will soon start formal peace talks with the Maoists, a move the government earlier threatened to answer by stamping the parties with the ‘terrorists’ label.

At a time when the palace refuses to accept the mediation of an international third party, shows no signs of defeating the Maoists militarily nor of sincerely holding talks with political parties, the ceasefire and planned peace talks at least give parched Nepalis a sip of hope.