It was reported the other day that the re-unification of the two Congresses was “imminent” after the two sides “agreed” on a mutually acceptable formula. Currently, both sides are sorting out the remaining problems of adjustments of positions, particularly at district level. Though the breakaway NC-D’s president Sher Bahadur Deuba said he did not bargain for position, the delay in the process of merger of NC-D into NC was mainly due to the lack of agreement on power sharing. According to the reported deal, Deuba is to get a third position in the party’s order of precedence, after Koirala and former NC president Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, who has guided and supported Deuba in the intra-party squabbling with Koirala from the beginning. The two most important tasks Koirala has set himself are Congress unification and the elections to the constituent assembly (CA). Koirala’s strategy for luring NC-D functionaries and rank and file individually back into the Congress fold fell flat, and Deuba continued to insist on a “respectable” deal.

The leaders of the parent Congress accused Deuba of “handing over democracy to the palace on a platter” and Koirala prevented NC-D’s entry into the seven-party alliance for quite some time. Now, the emerging unity would largely represent a pact of expediency. The leaderships on both sides have feared that a divided Congress would prove costly to them in the elections — and Deuba’s NC-D might suffer even more. Friends of the Congress, particularly those at home and abroad who fear a Leftist sweep, have been encouraging both the Congresses to sink their differences and fight the elections with a united voice and combined strength. That is why Koirala has been saying time and again that he will make the two Congresses one before the polls. Many had alleged that the Congress was not prepared to hold the elections in June, the previous agreed month for the CA polls, until Congress unity.

What is easy for Congress unity is that the leaders do not have to sort out ideological and policy differences, including the party’s electoral platforms. What the parent Congress, or Koirala, decides will be acceptable to the NC-D leadership. But the real cause of the split has been personality clashes, factional fights and power ambitions of leaders. These differences are still so sharp and deep that they may flare up soon afterwards, at least after the CA elections. Infighting and treachery reached such dangerous levels in the Congress that the country and the people had to pay for it, most importantly, with the rise of royal regression in the recent past. Against this background, the question that arises about Congress unity is what good it would do the nation. If the re-unification turned out to be a mere marriage of convenience, it would, in a sense, be taking the public for a ride. The Congress has ruled the country for most of the post-1990 period, and Koirala, Bhattarai and Deuba, among them, have held the office of the Prime Minister 11 times. The results need no elaboration. The question of the lack of internal democracy in the Congress is also a matter of public concern.