Necessary functions

Over previous weeks, it appeared that another crisis was imminent. The government had sent a number of ordinances for ratification by the president regarding the amendment of electoral laws to allow for elections to be held. The president refused to ratify these ordinances on the grounds that consensus between the parties was necessary. The government then decided that it would send back the ordinances to the president, claiming that he had no authority to prevent their passing. 

Recently, however, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist, which currently leads the government, has decided not to send these particular ordinances back, so as to prevent direct confrontation between the government and the office of the president.

This is a positive step. It is true that the government has a point when it says that the president does not have the authority to withhold ordinances. But in the current crisis, this is a rather technical point – all decisions made by the government have to be viewed through a political lens. And if the government had tried to force the president to pass the ordinances related to electoral matters, it could have invited the president into taking a step that could be construed as an infringement on executive power. 

Further, such a move could only have further antagonised the opposition parties. Meanwhile, if the president did block the ordinances, the Maoist Party would take a more confrontational posture and come out protesting on the streets. These events could only have a negative impact upon the political process. 

All this would have been for the sake only of passing electoral laws, which in any case would not have opened the way for fresh elections. Even if the president passed the ordinances, the opposition parties would refuse to recognise the government’s legitimacy and to participate in elections thus called. In the case of elections, therefore, there is no option for the ruling parties but to reach an agreement with the opposition on how and when to hold elections in the country. 

In the meantime, there are many other actions that are necessary to ensure that the government and bureaucracy continue to function. In these areas it will be necessary for the government to issue ordinances. The president should not have any objection to accepting many ordinances that the government seeks to pass, as long as they do not directly affect the large political questions over which uncertainty continues to prevail. For this, however, it is necessary that decent relations prevail between the president and the government. Unnecessarily antagonising the president by asking him to pass controversial ordinances cannot be the way forward.