• FACE-TO-FACE
Nepali Congress leader Minendra Rijal says that his party should trust other coalition partners, particularly the CPN-Maoist Centre, but should also verify it. He says if the ruling alliance enlarges the pie of electoral gains in the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections, the NC should get a reasonable share. Ram Kumar Kamat of The Himalayan Times spoke with Rijal on NC's decision to go for poll arrangements with the ruling coalition partners as well as some other political issues, including his own role in the party. Excerpts:
The Nepali Congress has unanimously decided to go for poll tie-up or seat sharing arrangements with the ruling coalition partners, but two of the partners - the CPN-Maoist Centre and the CPN (Unified Socialist) - do not seem to be very happy about the kind of poll arrangements the NC has suggested. How do you look at this issue?
The party seems to have pretty much decided on electoral arrangements. I do not know whether there will be an alliance. When the party decided on seat sharing arrangements, it basically identified some common issues, and based on those, the party thinks that if coalition partners can agree on common platforms, the ruling parties can probably run as an alliance or reach agreement on sharing some first-past-thepost (FPTP) election constituencies. But one thing that makes me curious is, within the party, I have seen many people who very strongly argue that if CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal was not given a sweetheart deal for the arrangement, then he might switch sides and forge a left alliance with CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli, similar to the alliance that he had forged in the past. To them, I want to say if you cannot trust Dahal for next four months, how can you trust him for the next five years. Such arguments are logical fallacies. If I can trust him for four months, I have good reasons to believe that he is trustworthy for five years. But we have to resolve this.
You recently met Dahal. What issues did you discuss with him?
It was on my request that he agreed to meet me. I had a few questions on my mind. Communist literature has it that Lenin and Stalin said: trust but verify it. Former American President Ronald Reagan, while negotiating peace with the Soviet Union, always used to repeat 'trust but verify it.' The reason that took me to Dahal was that I want to trust him and verify his trustworthiness. The second question that I always have on my mind is that my party president always says that without an alliance it will be difficult to have majority. Dahal feels that he was let down by CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli. He said since Oli did not keep his word, he had to walk away from him and as a result the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) that they had created had to split and a new alliance had to be formed. We have a new government and Oli is in opposition and Dahal thinks that Oli should be taught a lesson.
If the ruling alliance leadership manages ticket distribution and if election campaign is run well, my projection is the ruling alliance should be able to win 154 out of 165 FPTP constituencies. That's a huge number. If that happens and on the day election results are announced what my party President has been saying will be fulfilled. The ruling alliance will have a simple majority. Dahal would have taught a good lesson to Oli, but what then? Post-polls you will have a responsibility to run the country for the next five years. The people of the country will not care who wins the elections.
They will care about what they will get in the next five years. Have we as an alliance identified those issues and platforms? Have we tried to forge unified positions on those issues? I have not seen that. One of the reasons that took me to Dahal was to motivate him that there should be a process on the basis of which, a common platform could be built, and on that platform we could run together. And that precisely is the message. I want to make sure Dahal does not think that the NC CWC has any other agenda besides the desire to have a common platform if we enter into an electoral arrangement.
What did Dahal tell you? We often see the NC and the CPN-MC differ on some foreign policy issues and some national issues.
Discussion on developing common platform has not taken place yet. As long as the leadership within the ruling alliance is willing to sit down and try to build a common platform, this is doable. I cannot judge him now. I will certainly wait to see if that happens. And secondly, I am not in a party leadership position. Those who are in leadership positions are the ones who should be calling the shots. They have to be able to read Dahal's mind and motivate him to stay the course and get the outcome. I do not want to be judgemental on this.
There are some within the NC who believe that the NC being the oldest democratic force should not go for poll tie-up with other parties, but the party president is very much for it. What do you think is the best option for the NC?
Had you asked me the same question before the local polls, I would have said we would have been much better off if elections were fought as a three-way race among the NC, the UML and the socialist centre comprising all parties in the ruling alliance other than the NC, but that did not happen. We are already in a phase where we cannot go back and redo it. That is to say, we have already committed some sort of electoral adjustment among parties within the ruling alliance.
Our CWC has already taken a decision on this issue. If all parties were to run on their own, my projection is the NC would win 77 and the other parties in the ruling alliance would prevail in 13 out of 165 FPTP seats in the House of Representatives. If we were to run as an alliance then my projection is that the current ruling alliance would win 154 FPTP seats; that is to say the ruling alliance's pie would enlarge by 64 seats. Hence, if, by forming an alliance the NC gets to run in as many constituencies as to come out victorious in a little over 77 seats, and most, not all of the enlarged pie, goes to the partners in the alliance, I will be pretty happy with the alliance mathematics. Can my party leaders, who will be negotiating with partners in the alliance, make sure that we get some benefits out of the alliance? If they can deliver on that, I cannot complain about their decision.
Are you saying that if the NC contests elections on its own, it could win 77 FPTP seats?
My projection is based on the votes we got in the recently concluded local level election. I had looked at 2017 elections also. Back then also, the local elections votes were a very good, almost close to 100 per cent correct predictor of the general election outcome. Anyone can go back and check the veracity of my claim. Once again let me emphasise that I am okay with partners in the ruling alliance getting a very large share of the enlarged pie, but the NC's share should not be reduced to what it would have been had every party run on its own. But this issue has to be discussed within the ruling alliance and resolved.
There are leaders in the NC who believe that CPN-MC Chair Dahal cannot be trusted. What do you have to say?
I would not be judgemental on that. Let me borrow from a famous quip from Lenin and Stalin that former US President Ronald Reagan so often repeated while negotiating the peace with the Soviet Union. "Trust but verify." I am willing to trust Dahal but will verify my trust. Recently CPN-MC Chair Dahal said that the NC should help his party emerge as the second largest party and first left party. What do you have to say on that?
I would not like to comment on that except to say that every political party is trying to get the best bargain. While one is trying to get the best bargain, one probably will be positioning, or say grandstanding a bit. I can live with that. I would not take that too seriously. Let me just cite an example of what happened in the local level election. I had written a piece on April 18, projecting that if parties had run separately on their own then the NC would have been victorious in 306 local levels. With the alliance, we won 329 local level leadership positions. That is to say we added 23 local level positions by being a part of the alliance. All I am saying is let us take a cue from that.
Your decision to quit as defence minister after losing election for the party's general secretary earned you praise but you are not getting any role in the party. Why?
People have said that I did set an example by quitting from a Cabinet position. I have heard from people who are closer to Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba that he has taken my decision to quit the defence portfolio as an offence to him. Let me add in the same breath that he has not said anything of that sort to me directly. This was purely my personal call, of course with the approval of my wife. I do not want to talk too much about it now. It has already been more than seven months since then. People have already judged me on this. I still feel very strongly that I did the right thing. Had I not done so I would not have been in peace with my mind. I ran for the position of general secretary from Shekhar Koirala's team. I did not challenge Deuba. But I was in the team of someone who challenged Deuba. Deuba nominated everyone from Shekhar Koirala to Kalyan Gurung, who challenged him, into the party's CWC.
That means Deuba thinks that they should have a role in the party. I cannot ask him to nominate me. That is Deuba's judgment call. I lost the election to Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma, who many believe are the future of the NC. I would be too judgemental or opinionated if I did not believe so. Or even if I have any doubt about it, I would be a fool to say so in public. What I am keen about is to know if I have a role in Gagan and Bishwa Prakash's NC. I guess I have all the right to ask them this question. The rest is their call.
Have they raised questions about you in the party?
I have not heard anything of that sort having been raised in the party CWC.
Are you going to contest elections from your constituency in Morang district?
I am incumbent member of the HoR. There were very few people who thought I had a chance to win. But I did prevail in a difficult constituency. I have reasons to be satisfied with my performance in the House. I very strongly feel that I have every right to ask for party ticket to run from the same constituency. But just in case the party decides otherwise, I certainly have the right to test my luck and my support with the people who voted me in the last time.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 2, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
