Countdown: 30 days

I’m an eleventh-hour person. Even if I’m given a month to submit a 10-page assignment, I will wait for the last week to start it. I might even follow my teacher around negotiating an extension on the deadline. Eventually, I will be scrabbling to finish it a night before the submission.

I have, but myself, to blame for it and I understand it when others procrastinate. However, you would think that if 601+ people are made responsible to write their country’s constitution in 2 years, the cut-off date wouldn’t be such a problem.

But no, even as the countdown flashes just a month till the constitution-writing deadline, much of it remains unwritten. In fact, we don’t even have a draft ready. Only three out of eleven thematic committees of the Constituent Assembly (CA) have submitted their full reports at the Constitutional Committee. Compiling the reports alone is expected to take a month.

So will our elected CA members achieve their purpose by May 28? “Neta haru lai ek arka sanga jhagada gardai ma fursad chaina” (these politicians are too busy fighting each other) is a sentence you won’t miss if you listen to the political chit-chats of the ‘common people’. The parties are yet to resolve differences on key issues including the form of governance, army integration and state restructuring. The sense of euphoria, of hope… of change brought by the April Uprising and the elections thereafter have long been replaced by frustration or worse, a sad acceptance of the situation. The completion of the constitution was not just a political process, Nepali people fought for this revolution and it symbolizes victory of the cause.

Consensus is the magic word but even if all the parties come together and work, a month is too short for the kind of constitution the people had hoped for or even for a short version for that matter. The simplest way out now is to extend the tenure of the CA. The Maoists, as usual, are already throwing a tantrum- they won’t allow an extension of the CA unless the government is formed under their leadership (someone should remind the Maoists that the people chose them to form the government, they chose to resign and quit). NC, on the other hand, is pitching for another election altogether. As unrealistic as it is, another election would mean that all the resources spent till now on the CA will be a waste. All this, at a backdrop of Maoist running para-military trainings and threatening of Jana Andolan III. The streets of Kathmandu are already marked by processions hoisting a red flag around.

I am not a political analyst and I don’t know enough to make correct judgments here. But I am a Nepali citizen. I had voted for change, for stability, for development and right now I am disappointed watching our so-called leaders in a power-hungry blame game. If the parties could unite ‘against’ monarchy can’t they once again unite ‘for’ the people and live up to their commitments?

Written by: Paavan Mathema for Speak Out.