Over the past week, the government has given assurances that it will act against people held guilty by the High Level Probe Commission (HLPC) headed by former Supreme Court judge Krishna Jung Rayamajhi. The Cabinet decided last Thursday to transfer the cases of those accused in the Rayamajhi report of corruption or misuse of the public purse to the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA). Accordingly, the anti-corruption statutory body will initiate proceedings against more than 50 persons, who were ministers in the King-led Cabinet or its political appointees. This number is out of the total of 202 against whom HLPC recommended action nearly three months ago. On Sunday, PM Girija Prasad Koirala also promised to take action against officials of the disbanded Royal Commission for Corruption Control (RCCC) after the probe commission headed by former appellate court judge Madhav Prasad Ojha submits its report.

The government, after sleeping on the Rayamajhi report for so long, has finally started showing some signs of life, particularly in light of widespread calls for making the report public and bringing to book people implicated by HLPC. Of late, the government seems to have created the impression that its failure to punish those who had a hand in trying to suppress the popular uprising in April last year is alienating the common people. To this has been added the widely perceived role of the former royal regime’s diehards in fomenting the Madhesi revolt in parts of the Terai and the consequent arrest of a number of them. Another question is what will happen to three-fourths of the accused? The government’s less-than-normal enthusiasm for acting against the foes of democracy and the Jana Andolan was evident when it retained or even promoted some of those holders of high office even as they were being interrogated by HLPC.

There is at least some truth in the doubt expressed by many that the present mode of action against the accused will protract the cases indefinitely instead of bringing the guilty to justice soon enough. Subjecting them to the old law under which they had acted even after a people’s revolution instead of trying them in the new context, say for crimes against humanity, will make their conviction extremely difficult. In addition, how many of those high-ranking people accused of corruption or abuse of authority by CIAA have ultimately been convicted in the past forms yet another basis for doubt. Things are likely to become more difficult as the present CIAA office bearers are those people who served under the royal regime and who have not taken afresh the oath of office. The picture of the judiciary is not very sanguine, either. Moreover, action should not be selective. And the King has been held to be the principal accused in the report. If the government wants to capture the spirit of Jana Andolan II, it should not entrust anybody with high office if he or she had collaborated with the erstwhile royal regime. Whether the Koirala government can do so is of course a huge question.