There is no country in the world where a political party bows down before the members of its party workers. If somebody is elected on the basis of the party’s ideology, he or she should abide by the whip of the party. Without any political whip, the party turns into a disordered house of a bunch of anarchists.  We have been saying for a long time that CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist are not political parties but just clubs or bunches of political actors. This proved recently when the government was forced to withdraw the whip by the Janajati caucus of the party.  In a parliamentary democracy, this is  very unusual. So far as my personal observation is concerned, I am not surprised to see these kinds of scenes.


We have been opposing federalism on the ground that it will split the country on the basis of caste, ethnicity and language. This was what we saw in the Legislature Parliament last week. The country’s three major parties bowed down in front of the Janajati caucus. This will repeat again in Nepal. This is just a beginning. There is no doubt that a person can hold his private opinion but he cannot express it when it comes to the collective question of the political party.


Our party is not against the devolution of power to the people. We believe that this can done by strengthening the local bodies by giving them more authority and power so that they can fulfill the aspirations of the people. It is unfortunate that some of our leaders are trying to create another unit to centralize power in the name of state restructuring,


Federalism is not a subject that the political parties of this country had tried to enforce. Federalism will not succeed in this nation under any circumstances. Federalism will fail in this nation. The people are already living in a state of terror. They are not able to express themselves due to threats and fears. The decision to head for a federal structure was taken in a dark room and only later informed in the CA. The Nepali people had not adopted the agenda of federalism during the uprising in 1950, 1989, 2005-06.


The ethnic federalism issue was raised in such a nation with ethnic people in minority, to form ethnic states and provide rights to the ethnic people. Federal structure was brought calling for ethnic rights to natural resources. The game to increase friction between the ethnic groups living in harmony has been played since earlier times. Some leaders of the political parties calling for federalism feel that federalism is not right. When Nepal adopts a federal structure, its identity and existence will be in peril. There are many reasons for this, including economic and political situations. The nation’s nationality and integrity will not exist.

(Chitra Bahadur K.C. is a Nepalese politician. He is the chairman of the Rastriya Jana Morcha.)