A 10-year civil war between the Government of Nepal and Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist formally ended in 2006 with an April ceasefire followed by a November peace agreement. The November 2006 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) formally ended the ten year conflict in Nepal between the King Gyanendra’s Royal Nepal Army and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist.
In the post-conflict transitional period, Nepal turned to power sharing as a way to bring all sides of the conflict together, reduce the likelihood of a return to violence, and stabilize the country to create a favourable atmosphere for representative elections. Power sharing had two distinct phases: formal arrangements during the 18 months between the peace agreement and elections, and a more informal set of agreed-upon principles to complete unfinished reforms after elections. Although the first phase of power sharing accomplished some key objectives, it also encouraged political stagnation and gave ‘old guard’ politicians an excuse to stay in power even after election results proved that citizens wanted otherwise.
Power sharing in Nepal has served its purpose. Moving forward requires actors both within and outside Nepal to trust whoever becomes the majority party to abide by the rules of democracy. To best facilitate the transition, four factors should be considered:
Recommendations:
- Complete the transition from consensus politics to the majority model. The consensus approach of power sharing facilitated elections but encouraged deadlock, as needed reforms were pushed to the back burner in the interim period because of a failure of leadership and lack of mandate. Allowing majority-rule framework to implement policy will put needed reforms back on track.
- Institute safeguards to ensure majority-rule success. The successful transition from war to democracy will be viewed as a failure if the Maoists use power sharing, elections, and the transition period to assume total control of the state. Several different constitutional frameworks can provide similar safeguarding benefits as the universal consensus model, but without the repeated deadlocks.
- Discourage the temptation of ethnic ‘power-dividing’. Although it is tempting to carve southern Nepal into autonomous zones in order to placate ethnic groups, power-dividing decentralization will create more problems than it solves. Legitimating territorial ethnic division encourages internal displacement and conflict for the sake of buying off a problem rooted in class discrimination.
- Finish the job with the Army and National Defence Council. The difficulties of consensus negotiations are multiplied in the case of sensitive security concerns. In order to tie off the last loose ends of the consensus model, Army integration, composition of the National Defence Council, and security sector reform should be the first issues tackled by the new government.
