The bones of democracy

After Tribhuvan died in Switzerland - his son Mahendra took over. Aryal describes the King as “the most cunning devilish shrewdest ruler in the history of Nepal. He withdrew all the people’s power, ruled arbitrarily and formed a government of yes men.”

By 1990, Nepalis had begun rebelling against oppressive royal edicts again and a new quest for democracy began. “We wrote a new constitution in three months,” remembers Aryal.

At the request of the then Chief Justice, Hari Prashard, Aryal also helped reform the judiciary during this period.

The judiciary is now the most consistent element of Nepalese democratic history, they’ve made revolutionary judgments - especially that the king is not above the constitution. The Supreme Court has upheld these judgments, stating that the king is under the constitution and can’t revise it. … but the practice of democracy hasn’t always been guaranteed by the legislature until recently.

In 1991, thousands were jailed during many anxious months of protest, and although the Supreme Court ordered their release, the King’s hand-picked government denied their authority. After 18 months, parliament was dissolved and Aryal’s vision of a reformed multi-party political system became little more than a well articulated dream.

He was jailed often along with a number of civil society leaders. “The police treated us well”, he remembers, even when at over 70-years of age soon after his retirement as a Supreme Court judge, Aryal was incarcerated for 18 days.

Nineteen were dead at the end of the 1991 uprising and Aryl blames King Mahendra personally.

He was inhuman, he should be accountable for these deaths. Civil society has played a commendable role here, they have no political game to play except the well being of the people, and the country.

It would take another 16 years of fear and constant political instability before the Nepalese people could reclaim their rights. Between 1961 and 1990 Nepal had no formal party system, no rule of law and no press freedoms. Mahendra could and often did override the Nepalese judiciary’s initiatives to create a multi-party system and a transparent legislature but his tyranny would take its toll.

Today, Aryal maintains that while peace in the wake of the mid November 2006 interim government agreement signed by both the government and the Maoist rebels appears to be fragile, it will hold.

Nepal is in a quagmire. After a long protest and hunger strikes, students’ dissatisfaction with the standard of their educators convinced the courts that competitive testing was vital to maintaining standards. I don’t disagree with them, democracy is a system of checks and balances. There’s no room for autocratic pressures here now.

He says this in spite of the chaos their daily strikes are causing. Elsewhere, Maoist led labour unions recently threatened a dozen banks with strikes and the atmosphere on the streets of Kathmandu remains tense as traffic crawls at snails pace. Will the calm hold long enough for the UN to complete its arms registry and for the mid 2007 democratic elections to be accomplished?