KATHMANDU: Thailand’s coup has hit close to home in Nepal’s capital. Here, a hereditary monarch, who like his South-east Asian counterpart claims to be the incarnation of a god, sits in his palace brooding — or Internet gambling, depending on the rumours — after being forced to return power to the people in April, following three weeks of swelling street protests.
But few would grant King Gyanendra the unwavering support that Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has fully endorsed the government takeover, enjoys from both his armed forces and the general public.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Koirala was quick to dismiss the possibility that the army would join with King Gyanendra in a replay of the ‘royal coup’ of Feb. 1, 2005. “Nepal now has (people’s sovereignty). I can never believe such a thing could happen,” Koirala, who leads the Nepali Congress Party, told journalists on Wednesday.
But his reluctant partner in the seven-party alliance (SPA), which even more hesitantly joined hands with then outlawed Maoist rebels late in 2005 to oust the king, said the slow pace of reform set in motion by Koirala’s government makes such an act possible. “Another military coup cannot be ruled out in Nepal just like in Thailand if the present transitional period continues for a long time,” said Madhav Kumar Nepal of the moderate United Marxist-Leninist wing of the Communist Party of Nepal.
The Maoists themselves believe that the king is only biding his time, watching for signs of disunity before making another attempt to seize power. At a press conference, Maoist leader Dinanth Mishra warned: “The king will not hesitate to take over if the SPA and the Maoists break their ties.”
King Gyanendra actually began his public meddling in Nepalese politics in October 2002, when he fired the then prime minister, replacing him with his own appointee. By Feb. 1, 2005, the monarch had gone through three leaders and when he dismissed Sher Bahadur Deuba in a bloodless coup — with the army providing cover by cutting all communications with the outside world and blocking flights in and out of Nepal — it was for the second time.
After declaring a state of emergency, the king went on TV to inform Nepalese that Deuba, like his predecessors, had run a corrupt administration that bumbled its way through the Maoist war. With the army at his side he would soon put things right and return full democracy in three years, was King Gyanendra’s pledge.
Many Nepalese wanted to believe the promise of a return to peace and normalcy — despite rumours often repeated in elite circles that the businessman-king had opposed his brother King Birendra’s decision to grant multi-party democracy during the first people’s movement in 1990.
Gyanendra, it was said, had spent the years since then working behind the scenes to sabotage the political parties’ efforts.
April’s people’s uprising put the king back in his place — even more emphatically than 1990 had forced the monarchy to take a backseat to people power, according to some observers.
The revived lower house of parliament moved surprisingly fast to symbolically and practically strip the king, and his successors — if they have a place in a new constitution slated to be written by a future constituent assembly — of his powers.
‘His Majesty’s Government’ became ‘Government of Nepal’ and the ‘Royal Nepal Army’ changed to ‘Nepali Army’.
However, many among Kathmandu’s middle-class believe that Gyanendra is plotting a comeback and that the army, with its deep cultural ties to the palace, would be at his back.—Dawn/IPS News Service
