Nepal: Caught Between India and China As Elections Approach

Chief among them are the upcoming federal elections, to be held in two phases on November 26 and December 7. This will be the first national election held since the country’s new constitution went into effect in 2015, following local-level polls earlier this year. According to the new constitution, the new parliament will consist of two bodies, the 275-member Pratinidhi Sabha (House of Representatives) and the 59-seat National Assembly. While Nepal has held elections for Constituent Assemblies in 2008 and 2013 in order to write a new constitution after the abolition of the monarchy in 2008, this is the first real parliamentary election since 1999. The last parliament was dissolved in 2001 due to the declaration of a state of emergency by Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, the last king of Nepal, who ascended to the throne after his nephew murdered the previous king and then committed suicide.

Until the expiration of its term on October 14, 2017, Nepal’s government was made up of the Constituent Assembly, which had functioned as a de facto parliament after the passage of the constitution in 2015. It contained 593 seats, with the largest bloc within the parliament allotted to the Nepali Congress party, a centrist party led by Sher Bahadur Deuba, who became prime minister in June 2017. Due to continuous political instability, Nepal has had a host of different prime ministers over the past decade, with some staying in office only for a few months.

The members of the House of Representatives will be elected from both single-member, first-past-the-post constituencies, and by closed-list proportional representation from a single nationwide constituency. One-hundred and sixty-five seats will be selected from the single-member constituencies, with the remaining 110 chosen by the proportional method. For a party to pass the electoral threshold to be seated under the proportional method, it must garner at least 3 percent of the popular vote. In a region rife with caste-based, ethnic, and personality-oriented parities, such a threshold serves the purpose of keeping out overly narrow and sectarian groups. As a result of the federal elections, Nepal will probably acquire a new prime minister, based on whichever party obtains a majority. The country will also elect a president and vice president, although these positions will mostly be ceremonial.

This will also be the first election in which Nepal’s new provinces (pradesh) – of which there are seven, all yet to be named – will play an important role. It will be interesting to note how Nepal’s new federal structure will impact its politics. Prior to the implementation of the new constitution, Nepal was a unitary, centralized state, dominated by Nepali-speaking pahari (hill) elites. However, the new constitution, recognizing the country’s diversity, divided the country into several regions, to be named by a vote of two-thirds in the regional assemblies. Those provincial assemblies will be elected simultaneously along with the federal parliament in Kathmandu in the upcoming elections. Federalism also impacts the composition of the National Assembly, with each region electing eight members to that body (the other three members will be chosen by the president of Nepal).

Federalism will matter most in Nepal’s southern terai (plains) area, bordering India. This area, known also as Madhes, shares close ethnic ties with the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with which it shares an open border. In particular, Nepal’s regional parties will fare well in elections in provinces two and five, both of which border India, and contain between them most of the Madhes area. Most of the region’s grievances are driven by ethnic and linguistic issues; while almost half of Nepal’s population lives in the plains, political power and the country’s national identity have mostly been monopolized by the Nepalis of the hills. In December 2016, the Madhesi Morcha, an umbrella group claiming to represent the people of the terai, demanded that Hindi join Nepali as an official language of Nepal, a request that was not granted. While standard Hindi is spoken by few Nepali, it is often used as the lingua franca of the Terai region, and many of its dialects or closely related languages, such as Bhojpuri, Tharu, and Urdu, are spoken by millions in Nepal. Nepali itself is the native language of only around 45 percent of the country’s people.

The two major groupings on Nepal’s political spectrum are the Nepali Congress in the center, which has usually pursued good relations with India, and the parties on the left, which have tried to work out a more equitable balance between India and China. The major left parties include the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) (CPN-UML), whose ideological affinity is now more left-center, and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center) (CPN-Maoist Center), which played a major role in the country’s civil strife last decade. Led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former Maoist insurgent, the CPN-Maoist Center was once seen as a champion of the poor, but has so far failed to deliver on development when in power.

The main right-wing party, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP or the National Democratic Party), is close to India’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and commands some support in the country, though not enough to win sufficient seats to form a government. The party’s platform includes the restoration of the country’s monarchy and the transformation of Nepal into a Hindu state, although both those clauses were removed on the order of the Electoral Commission in March 2017 for violating Nepal’s secular, republican constitution.

Judging by the local elections previously held this year in Nepal, and the widespread desire among Nepalis for development after years of political chaos and dysfunction, the parties that promise and deliver the most on development have the best shot at victory in the upcoming elections. For this year, parties like the RPP, centered on a specific ideology, as well as the Madhesi outfits, can only have a limited impact. Rather, the main competition is between the parties of the left and the Nepali Congress, all of which have deep institutional roots in the country, and a track record of handling power, however poorly. In the local elections, which took place in May, June, and September 2017, the CPN-UML, Nepali Congress, and CPN (Maoist Centre) emerged as the three biggest parties, respectively, with the first two of those being closely matched. The composition of Nepal’s future parliament is likely to reflect these local results: either a CPN-UML or Congress government is likely.

At the convergence of domestic political competition and foreign affairs is the issue of increased Chinese investment in Nepali infrastructure, particularly roads, rails, and dams, and how it impacts Nepal’s relations with India. While Nepal has a great need for Chinese investment, and has moved to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the country is still anxious to remain on good terms with India. Millions of Nepalis work in India, and political and cultural ties between the two countries have traditionally been strong, despite some resentment in Nepal for India’s “big brother” type of behavior.

Just weeks before the election, Nepal’s cabinet, dominated by the Nepali Congress, decided to annul a major dam contract that had been awarded to China during a prior government formed by the CPN (Maoist Center). The 1,200 megawatt Budhi Gandaki hydro project contract had been awarded to the China Gezhouba Group Corporation, but was annulled due to an alleged lack of “transparency.” The move will no doubt please India, which wants to invest more heavily in Nepal’s hydropower sector, despite a track record of lethargy in completing projects. Undoubtedly, such a move was intended to shore up Indian support for the Nepali Congress if the election ends up yielding contested, close, or unclear results.

While India is unlikely to intervene directly in Nepal’s electoral process, given the country’s instability and track record of political chaos, all of Nepal’s parties are doing all they can do gain even the slightest advantage in the upcoming elections. Perhaps Nepal will become more stable as a result of the upcoming elections, but the cutthroat characteristics of its politics will likely persist for a while.