Nepali Congress can learn a lesson from Hillary’s speech - Prakash Rimal

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Kathmandu, August 30:On Wednesday Senator Hillary Clinton vowed to work to elect the man, who thwarted her presidential dreams, Barack Hussein Obama, now waiting to become the first black president of the United States. In an emotional speech she backed Obama as the Democratic party’s nominee for the presidential election, due on November 4, and appealed to her supporters to stand by Barack.

“Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” she told a party convention in Denver, Colorado.Back home, Nepal’s “oldest and largest democratic institution” — the Nepali Congress (NC) — is groping for a way forward five months after suffering a humiliating defeat in the historic CA election. The party began its Central Working Committee meeting on Monday and practically spent the entire week discussing too many different issues that centred around General Secretary Bimalendra Nidhi’s paper. Key among them are calls for the party’s re-organisation, announcement of fresh dates for the General Assembly and General Convention, revivalof collective leadership and creating an atmosphere for emotional unity.

Each speaker raised these issues that mean different things to different speakers.The CWC members need to come out of the shells in which they reside. Sooner or later, the Assembly and the Convention will have to take place to elect the party leadership. But voting a faction in and another out of the leadership ladder hardly contributes to unity in the party unless, like Hillary Clinton stated, the NC rank and file ‘unite as a single party with a single purpose’ irrespective of who wins or who loses. The thing called team spirit seems to be lacking in the NC.

What’s important at this stage is that the NC men and women pledge to stand by the party — irrespective of who they would want to see commanding the ship. Or else, rushing for a vote to choose a new team or re-elect the old guards will only prove to be a purpose defeated.In the absence of such a pledge, the party will never be able to unite emotionally or re-organise itself, even if Assembly meets within the next three months and the Council appoints a new leader in another nine months.

The CWC members better understand that re-organising a mass-based party like the NC is not as easy as it sounds. Besides, the organisation needs to attract the youth by addressing their concerns.While the NC badly needs a fresh impetus, the idea of collective leadership perhaps deserves a cold, hard look. For, collective leadership will only take the party back to square one.

Remember the triangular tussles and sabotages among and between Girija Prasad Koirala, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and late Ganesh Man Singh through the ‘90s? The jumbo CWC better understand that the lack of ‘emotional unity’ in the party is a continuation of the deep wounds the top three NC leaders inflicted on one another in their fight for supremacy at the cost of one another. What would remain of the party if history is repeated again?

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