Since Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned on 30th June under pressure from the Maoists, the Constituent Assembly, which has failed to draft a republican constitution and could not agree on anything but to depose King Gyanendra, has failed for the tenth time to elect a Prime Minister.
The Telegraph, Nepal, reported on moves to give the country the Monarchy back:
Can the world lone super-power, United States, afford another failed state in South Asia? Perhaps not!
With war torn Afghanistan already a failed state, Pakistan zeroing in the failed state status and, continued political instability already pushing Nepal to imminent economic collapse, should the US revise its Nepal policy?
The Nepali Patra Weekly, October 29, 2010, claims that the US has all of a sudden acquired an active posture in Nepali politics. The US is entirely convinced that the Nepali political actors and political parties were an incompetent lot and to expect positive results from them would be a self defeating exercise, writes the weekly referring to various sources in Kathmandu.
"The US is overly concerned over the increasing hobnobbing between leaders of the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, Unified Maoists and Communist China. The current state of Nepali politics is not appropriate for institutionalizing democracy in the country. And, the continuation of political deadlock could lead to the state capture by the Maoists with the support of the Chinese", the US has also comprehended.The US basically fears that Nepal could become ultimately another North Korea in Asia, the weekly reveals.
Sources have told the weekly newspaper that the US is in favor of "reviving monarchy in Nepal".
Interestingly, the report reveals that the US is not in favor of reinstating Gyanendra Shah as just as a Constitutional Monarch but it wants to see the former sovereign as an "active monarch". Sudden twist in Nepali politics?
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6 comments:
Isn't this typical. You never miss the water until the well runs dry.
OK, OK... now how about trying that with Afghanistan, and Iraq?
How do you manage to put both..
'The current state of Nepali politics is not appropriate for institutionalizing democracy in the country.' and then..
'the US is in favor of "reviving monarchy in Nepal"
..and fail to see the contradiction.
A monarch is everything that a democracy shouldn't be, an unelected head with no accountability and in effect a dictator.
It seems you fail to see that a crowned democracy is not contradictory, but the ultimate form of government that garantees individual liberties and participation of everybody in the political process.
A King or a Queen under a Constitutional Monarchy is never obliged to any political party like a president is. They are not elected and they don't belong to any party, therefore nobody can accuse them of supporting a specific group or only the decisions/ideas innitiated by a group. They are above all minor or major political clinches/arguments and only their prestige is what calms down spirits, not their inexistent powers.
A monarch is everything that a democracy shouldn't be, an unelected head with no accountability and in effect a dictator.
Could you please name one living Monarch who acts like a dictator? Even the most powerful Monarchs – King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia or Sultan Qaboos bin Said al-Said of Oman – have less personal power than presidential dictators like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe or Raùl Castro of Cuba, not to mention the republican oligarchy that rules China or North Korea.
According to you, Queen Elizabeth must be styled a dictator? In which country do you live? Manchester must be in cloud cuckoo land.
I meant dictatorial in the sense that they cannot be removed by any form of voting, their power is assured no matter what they choose to do with it.
She's only above the political fray because she has nothing to do with it and the only times she wields her power you have to ask who gave her the right to make that decision?
One of the major problems for me isn't that the monarch themselves make undemocratic decisions, but that through the crown parliament is allowed to make undemocratic decisions. i.e. Royal prerogative, Privy council etc.
What "powers" does the British/Australian Monarch have? Does she really "threaten" you? I feel much more threatened by the politicians' powers - and any president would be either a politician or a politicians' puppet.
A Monarch's position is not just inherited. Take the Australian example: The 1999 referendum gave the Monarchy a democratic legitimacy. The people wanted the Monarch to continue.
The father of modern sociology, Max Weber, pointed out that governments draw their legitimacy from three basic sources: traditional, religious, and legal. The first two are self-explanatory; by "legal," Weber meant Western-style democracies based on popular representation and the rule of law.
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