As Nepal chooses its president, India must be cautious not to get sucked into the volatile vortex of Nepalese politics

Nepal is set to get a new president. Presidential polls are underway even as this is being written, and by the end of Thursday night, India’s Himalayan neighbour will settle for either Subash Chandra Nembang of the CPN-UML or Ram Chandra Paudel of the Nepali Congress party as nearly 900 lawmakers cast their vote at the Parliament House in Kathmandu. The election for the vice president’s post will be held a week after the presidential election on 17 March. The current president, Bidya Devi Bhandari’s tenure ends on Sunday. Going by the numbers, Paudel’s win appears the likely outcome. He is backed by the Maoists, including prime minister Pushpakamal Dahal’s (aka Prachanda) Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) that has 32 seats, and of course, former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s Nepali Congress —the single largest party with 89 seats. In total, Paudel has the backing of eight political parties, including the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialists), whose leader Madhav Kumar Nepal is also a prime ministerial hopeful in a yet-to-be-arranged triangular power-sharing agreement between himself, Prime Minister Dahal and former prime minister Deuba. On the other hand, Nembang has the support of KP Sharma Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and a posse of independents. Unless there is cross-voting on a large scale, it may be reasonably assumed that Paudel would come out on top to assume an office that has grown in significance and authority in Nepal’s volatile political climate to the extent of becoming an impregnable veto power that can sway political fortunes. For instance, Bhandari, the incumbent, who was from KP Oli’s party CPN-UML, had acted as the cat’s paw for the former prime minister numerous times during her five-year tenure — twice dissolving the Parliament on “recommendation” of Oli, forcing the Supreme Court to twice reinstate the House. She had also gone again Nepal’s Constitution and refused to ratify the Citizenship Bill that was twice endorsed by both Houses of Parliament in a move that was in apparent sync with the stance taken by Oli’s CPN-UML. In fact, the current political turmoil in Kathmandu that saw Oli’s party pull out of the two-month-old coalition government between CPN-UML and Prachanda’s CPN-MC precipitated over the choice of president. Prachanda was apprehensive that Oli’s candidate on the presidential post would essentially make him a lame duck prime minister with strings of all power centres lying in the wily Oli’s hand. He, therefore, decided to back Paudel, the candidate proposed by NC’s Deuba, knowing well enough that it would be the end of alliance. With the support of Deuba’s NC, the single-largest party and six other smaller parties, Prachanda appears to be comfortable with numbers and looks likely to continue as the prime minister. Speculation is rife in local media that Prachanda, Deuba and Madhav Nepal (of Unified Socialists) will go into a rotatory arrangement for the prime minister’s chair. This has naturally left Oli, the wily old operator, in the lurch. His party members — including foreign minister Bimala Rai Paudyal, who served in the office for 42 days before being forced to resign due to the break up of the alliance between Oli and Prachanda — are making dark accusations of “foreign interference” for the current instability. Paudyal has hinted that recent high-level visit by American and Indian officials, who she claimed had come “uninvited”, is somehow tied to Nepal’s political developments. Paudyel didn’t take names, but she was pointing at the recent visits by US under-secretary Victoria Nuland, Samantha Power, administrator of the USAID, and Afreen Akhter, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA). The American officials talk with senior politicians and government officials, reports Kathmandu Post. India’s foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra also visited Kathmandu in February, and along with meeting the prime minister, foreign minister and foreign secretary in the erstwhile government, had also met other political actors, including Deuba and Oli. Oli’s party is likely being opportunistic in blaming the instability on foreign hand — a permanent feature in Nepal’s nascent democratic political system. After all, his alliance with Prachanda was an act of stunning political manipulation whereby he succeeded in keeping Deuba, chief of Nepal’s single-largest party and a five-time prime minister, at bay. That bit of political gymnastic wasn’t meant to last and it didn’t, given the intrinsic and irrevocable enmity between Prachanda and Oli, but the stacking of the cards in Nepal and the allegations of interference reflect the ease with which India can get sucked into the volatile vortex of Nepalese politics. Whether or not Kwatra’s visit had anything to do with the breaking up of Prachanda and Oli’s alliance is moot. What matters is that this is perceived to the case in Nepalese politics, and all subsequent political moves may spring from that axiomatic position. This places Nepal at the heart of India-China rivalry, more so since Oli is perceived to be close to China and Deuba is seen as leaning towards New Delhi. Inferences are already being drawn that “China has lost ground in Nepal.” This is not a great position for New Delhi. Though Nepal is at the heart of India’s Neighbourhood First policy, India hopes to remain the partner of choice for Nepal, not force, since such a perception in the past has ended up only intensifying anti-India sentiment in Nepal. Therefore, as Nepal makes its choices and goes through the nation-building process under an embryonic democratic structure, India must be on its guard in not appearing as overbearing or involved in its political process. Here, perception will shape reality. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.