Nepal in 1997: Political Stability Eludes

Abstract

The year 1997 began in very confusing and uncertain political conditions. The uncertainty, writ large in the composition of the second Parliament in which no party commanded an absolute majority, was aggravated by internal divisions within the parties and by unprincipled and highly opportunistic alliance maneuvers. The year witnessed a succession of three unstable coalition governments. In these circumstances, no new concrete policy or firm direction was possible or expected. At the end of the year, the coalition government of the Rastriya Prajantantra Party (RPP) and the Nepali Congress (NC), headed by RPP leader Surya Bahadur Thapa, remains in power. When the year rang in, Sher Bahadur Deuba's NC-led coalition government was in office. It was an uneasy compromise among factions within the NC (76 seats in Parliament), the rightist RPP (19 seats), and the regional Sadbhavana Party (NSP, 4 seats). This opportunistic grouping emphasized the sharing of ministerial portfolios rather than policies. The RPP was widely distrusted within NC and United Marxist-Leninist Party (UML, 89 seats) circles because its leaders had long been associated with the overthrown Panchayat system. It improved its credibility by winning 19 seats in the current Parliament as compared to four in the first, and its general secretary, Pashupati Shumsher Rana, said that his party was now in a strong position to manipulate the two major parties. This coalition government was formed following the reinstatement of the Pratinidhi Sabha (House of Representatives) by a ruling of the Supreme Court. The king had dissolved the prior Parliament, headed by the UML, on the advice of Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikari. Reading in the UML government's moves a strategy to hold and win both local and national elections while it was in power, the NC opened negotiations with the RPP. It had