A two-year jail term, a refund of the ‘embezzled’ amount of Rs. 45 million and a fine of equal amount constitute the verdict of the Royal Commission for Corruption Control (RCCC) against former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and three others, including former minister Prakash Man Singh. Two more got half that penalty. The circumstances of RCCC’s formation, the dubious legal qualifications of its members (none of them is a lawyer or a judge) and its widely alleged political motives, all combine to make its verdict suspect in the eyes of most people. By the same token, even if RCCC had given the convicts a clean chit, most people still would not have believed that they were innocent just because of

that. What is sorely lacking is that they were not tried by a competent and independent court. The issue, therefore, is not so much of whether Deuba is guilty or not as it is of the democratic principles of justice dispensation. And these principles have been

grievously injured.

The public will have no sympathy for Deuba, or anybody else, if they have committed corruption. But RCCC is the direct product of the February 1 royal takeover, armed with powers of investigating corruption, prosecuting people, deciding their fate, as well as taking action for contempt of it. So RCCC combines the powers of both the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), a constitutional organ, and the legally constituted Special Court. RCCC’s mandate, widely regarded as illegal, therefore strikes at the roots of the democratic legal principles and dangerously violates the jurisdiction of CIAA and the Special Court. If RCCC is to take care of corruption cases, then what justification is there in retaining these two agencies, spending the taxpayers’ money? Deuba may, as reported, go to the Supreme Court against RCCC, but the court is unlikely to resolve all questions and doubts about RCCC, particularly because RCCC is the Royal creation. Visiting former American senator Tom Daschle has, after Tuesday’s verdict, rightly called for RCCC’s dissolution and for a transfer of the case to the CIAA. RCCC is one of the factors that have made the people at home and abroad suspicious of the sincerity of the government’s commitment to representative democracy.