A Nepali Congress leader once apparently referred to his party as a "pile of stones". The implication was that the party, rather than being a coherent and organised body representing a particular ideology, was rather an agglomeration of diverse interest groups.
Every faction within it acted in an independent manner and paid little heed to the directions of the party leadership. This, the Congress leader implied, was a reason why the party performed poorly in the Constituent Assembly elections of 2008.
Historically, Nepal’s communist parties have been thought to be better organised and more disciplined than the Congress. They claim that they are committed to the principles of democratic centralism and they are supposed to possess a firm ideology from which party leaders are not supposed to deviate. This has, of course, not been borne out in practice.
Instead, factionalism has afflicted Nepal’s communist parties. And it has been the case that conflicts within the communist parties have had even more adverse effects than conflicts within the Congress.
For there is a tendency in the Congress for the short-term resolution, an unwillingness to let conflicts destroy the party. In the communist parties, on the other hand, divisions run incredibly deep, often causing paralysis to the entire party body.
When the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist)’s Jhalanath Khanal was prime minister, the chief threat to his government came from within his own party—from Madhav Nepal and KP Oli. The latter two succeeded in preventing Khanal’s government from efficient functioning. And the chief threat to the current Baburam Bhattarai-led government also comes from his own party—the Maoists.
Every decision that the government takes is first opposed by sections of the party led by Mohan Baidya—whether it be the 4-point agreement with the Madhesi parties, the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement agreement with India, the 7-point agreement with the other parliamentary parties.
This has made it immensely difficult for Bhattarai to run the government. Factionalism and indiscipline is even worse among the smaller parties. The innumerable splits in the Madhesi parties over the past few years are an indication of this.
The undisciplined nature of Nepal’s political parties poses a major threat to the development and functioning of Nepal’s democratic institutions. If parties continue to act the way they do, no form of government—whether parliamentary or presidential—will be able to function well.
The Maoists have been demanding a presidential system for greater stability. But if sections from the ruling party are themselves involved in efforts to sabotage their governments’ efforts, not even a directly elected president will be able to implement policy and provide services to the population. Such a president will be condemned to remain as, if not more, ineffectual than prime ministers under the current parliamentary system.
