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Impeach The President
Siddhi B Ranjitkar
Violation of law is the criminal act, and violation of the constitution is even more than a criminal act; every civil person knows it. So, anybody violating any law is subject to punishment no matter whether s/he is the president or prime minister or any common folk if they are living in the country of the rule of law. The president and the prime minister are the top law enforcement officials. It would be disaster if they were to breach the constitution.
The new constitution published in the Nepal Gazette on September 20, 2015 (2072.6.3) in its Article 61 (4) says, “The main duty of the President shall be to abide by and protect this Constitution.”
Article 71. Oath by President and Vice-President: Prior to assuming their respective offices, the President shall take an oath of office and secrecy before the Chief Justice, and the Vice-President, before the President, as provided for in the Federal law.
So, the president has taken the oath of office and secrecy from the Chief Justice that she would uphold this constitution and follow it.
Now, the question is whether the president Vidhya Bhandari has kept the oath of office taken under the constitution or not. The answer is certainly not because she did not stop the prime minister KP Oli from abusing the constitution of Nepal allowing Mr. Oli to appoint more than 25 ministers.
The new constitution published in the Nepal Gazette on September 20, 2015 (2072.6.3) in its Article 76 (9) says, “The President shall, on recommendation of the Prime Minister, constitute the Council of Ministers comprising a maximum of twenty five Ministers including the Prime Minister, in accordance with the inclusive principle, from amongst the members of the Federal Parliament.”
When President Bhandari administered the oath of office to the 26th minister she had definitely ignored the provision made in the Article 76 (9). She had shamelessly violated the constitution. She became the first president of Federal Democratic Republic Of Nepal following this constitution. Now, she had breached the same constitution through which she had become the president.
If she had been really the president that had been empowered to protect it she would have refused to administer the oath of office to the minister beyond 25th, and even warned the prime minister Oli of the prime minister appointing the 26th minister to his cabinet would infringed the constitution, and the president would have told the prime minister never breach the constitution. That did not happen because the president had disregarded the constitution or the president simply became the puppet of her former party boss: Mr. Oli.
Why the president did not perform her presidential duty? First thing it came to my mind was that she did not read the constitution. Then, it came to my mind that she was the member of the constituent assembly how come she did not know it; she should have known the contents of the constitution while debating it at the constituent assembly. The second thing that came to my mind was that she was totally illiterate of the constitution. All these things were unlikely cases but she had shown that she was so, as she did not follow the constitution while administering the ministers appointed by Oli without any consideration of the constitution. Oli could be a Jung Bahadur means that did not follow any laws, rules and regulations even made by him but the president could not.
Then, the question was how the parliament with the so many members actually 601 members could be so illiterate to elect the woman with the eyes that could not see the constitutional provision made for the president that she had been elected to. Then, was the president unaware of the constitutional provision? This was also most unlikely.
I could conclude that the president was not visually impaired, not dumb, not deaf, and not even illiterate of the constitutional provision even though most of the lawmakers were hardly literate; some of them were surely honorary PhD holders while others were real PhD holders. When the president administered the oath of office to the 26th minister she was mentally fit and she knew she was violating the constitution. The president had simply emerged as the Jung Bahadur shoving aside the constitution.
The president had ordered to punish the cadres of the United Democratic Madheshi Front (UDMF) when they demonstrated against her visit to the Janaki Mandir recently. Simply following the order of the president and ordering his home minister to punish the protestors, the prime minister had shown that he might be equally dumb deaf and blind to the constitution. The prime minister was unlikely to be dumb deaf and illiterate to the constitution because I saw and heard him talking to the reporters about the need for educating the common folks on the constitution. So, he was blindly following the order of the president to punish the UDMF cadres for protesting against the president at Janaki Mandir. For the information of the president and the prime minister, the constitution had guaranteed the rights to protest peacefully.
The state-owned newspaper ‘gorkhapatra’ reported on December 28, 2015 that Home Minister Shaktibahadur Basnet told the parliament that the police had taken eleven males and four females under custody charging them for misbehaving the president while she went to perform her Hindu duty on making offering to the Hindu deity called Sita at the Janaki Mandir. Other newspapers reported that the UDMF cadres had protested her visit to the Janaki Mandir peacefully.
Most probably, those UDMF cadres did not breach the constitution as the president did administering the oath of office to more than 25 members of the Oli cabinet. The constitution had made the provision for peacefully protesting any president, vice-president, ministers or their appropriate or inappropriate actions. So, the UDMF cadres had been following the constitution while refusing to welcome the constitution-violating president.
Now, the constitution-abusing president wanted to punish the constitution-abiding UDMF cadres. The unfortunate thing happened to Nepal and to all Nepalese since the so-called unifying personality Prithvi Narayan Shah took over from the highly developed and civilized personalities in Nepal was that none of the rulers of the State including Prithvi Shah followed the law. Then, the Jung Bahadur took over from the impotent Shah ruler. The Jung brothers inherited the power from Jung Bahadur. Jung brothers very appropriately took the name ‘shumsher’ means a deadly lion. Then following the name they took, these lion-like rulers became the deadly brute, and sucked every drop of blood of Nepalese leaving them in entirely destitute.
Then, brave Nepalese fought against the animal lion-like Rana rulers, recover the power from them, and entrusted the power to the Shah again hoping that the Shahs would be the benevolent rulers, but they turned out to be not better than the animal-like Rana rulers. However, Nepalese waited for another 50 years before terminating the Shah rule giving one chance after another to the Shah rulers to run the country benignly but they did not rather they tried to be more like monsters than the Rana rulers.
Now, all the animal-like rulers had gone but the new rulers were born but not better than the past ones. Nepalese had elected their 601 representatives to the Constituent Assembly to craft a new constitution. The first constitution could not complete the crafting of a new constitution. Then, Nepalese elected another Constituent Assembly that finally crafted the constitution, and adopted it. However, during the seven-year period of crafting a new constitution, the lawmakers and their political bosses had done nothing good except for a few cases for the people rather they engaged in power play, and in grabbing whatever possible from the state treasury and the people’s pockets. Were they better than the previous autocratic rulers? Not at all, so people needed to fight against those elected office holders until they were put behind bars for abusing the power.
After the completion of crafting the new constitution, the parliamentary portion of the Constituent Assembly remained. Following the constitution, the parliament elected the president, vice-president, speaker and so on. The parliament also elected the prime minister. Thus, the Nepalese mandated the president, and other members of the executive to run the country following the constitution. What did they do then? They shoved the constitution aside and behaved like Jung Bahadurs.
Even the first president did not follow the constitution, as the president administered the oath of office to the ministers exceeding the constitutionally mandated 25 members of the cabinet including the prime minister. Nepalese had not given their mandate to the president through the constitution to run the country, as the president, the prime minister and the ministers liked it. They needed to strictly follow the constitution to do any business of the State otherwise they would be liable to punishment.
Violating the law was the criminal act, and breaching the constitution was even a bigger crime. So, the president had committed the crime not only administering the 26th minister but also not doing her duty on protecting the constitution. Thus, the president had committed the double State crime. The prime minister also had committed the crime appointing more than 25 ministers. The high-ranking law enforcement officials such as the president and the prime minister had absolutely and gravely abused the power the people had mandated them.
Having the mandate to protect the constitution, the president did not perform her duty on safeguarding the constitution. She needed to warn the prime minister of exceeding the number of ministers. If the prime minister were to disregard the president’s warning then the president could simply refused to administer the oath of office to the ministers the prime minister had appointed not following the constitution. She should have done it to protect the constitution. The prime minister that violated the constitution had no rights to stay on in the power. The president not safeguarding the constitution had been good-for-nothing.
So, the president had been liable to punishment, as she failed in protecting the constitution. The only way to punish the president was to impeach her. The two-thirds majority of the lawmakers could punish the president for not safeguarding the constitution, and administering the oath of office to the ministers more than 25 not permitted by the constitution.
The lawmakers had not woken up to the reality of the president breaching the constitution. Political leaders such as Prachanda of UCPN-Maoist, Sushil Koirala, and Ram Chandra Poudel of NC had not felt that the president had breached the constitution, as none of them had raised any voice against the president administering the oath of office to ministers appointed not following the constitution.
The human rights organizations such as INSEC affiliated to the CPN-UML, and HURON affiliated to the NC also had not spoken out a single word against the president abusing the constitution. It was understandable that INSEC did not say anything about the president infringing the constitution, as it might go against the party policy of its parent organization but even the HURON of the NC did not say a single was not only a surprise but also the loss of the credibility of such an organization.
Civil rights advocates such as Padma Ratna Tuladhar, Daman Nath Dhungana, and Kanak Mani Dixit had no words to speak out against the president breaching the constitution. Why they were not concerned with the violation of the constitution might be because they also were not for accepting the constitution that they believed was not inclusive so not acceptable to them and to the people they represented; then why they needed to talk about the constitution they did not accept; that was what they might have thought.
Some Madheshi leaders had not accepted the constitution so they were not concern about anybody violating or not violating the constitution. In fact, they burned down the copies of this constitution in protest immediately after the constitution was adopted. Currently, they had been protesting against the constitution for not making it inclusive.
The irony is that the president and the prime minister the very persons that had aggressively and absolutely breached the constitution had been advocating for disseminating the constitution. The president and the prime minister also said that they had been working on enforcing the constitution. Probably, they did not know what the word ‘enforcing’ means. If they were to enforce the constitution, both the president and the prime minister needed to quit their respective office for not following the constitution. They had lost the mandate the people had given them.
The ‘gorkhapatra’ of December 28, 2015 had the news that two advocates such as Roshan Kumar Jha and Prabhuchand Jha had gone to the Supreme Court of Nepal on Sunday, December 27, 2015, and filed the case of the abuse of authority of appointing more than 25 ministers including the prime minister. That was a terrific job they did for bringing both the president and the prime minister to justice.
If the Supreme Court of Nepal, and the parliament were not to do anything concerning the president and the prime minister abusing the power, common folks needed to rise up peacefully for punishing these two top-tanking law enforcement officials that had absolutely infringed the constitution.
December 29, 2015
