Looking at history, and looking at it carefully, Nepal must recognise that the road from monarchy to democracy passes through oligarchy. Democratic revolutions have ended in oligarchies although we do not call them that. We persist in calling them democracies since many oligarchies (as kleptocracies) often masquerade as democracy. They adorn themselves in the rhetoric of democracy. Quite often we fail to recognise this masquerade because it is so good, and because democratic theorists have not bothered to give us the signage to distinguish between a democracy and an oligarchy-kleptocracy.

If one looks at the last three years of its political life, Nepal has accumulated a body of political practices that bode well for its future, from the hard negotiations between the seven-party alliance and the Maoists which ended the insurgency, to the agreement that the way forward is through a constituent assembly, to an acceptance by all parties of the rules of competitive electoral politics, to the acknowledgment of parliamentary politics as the best mode of dispute settlement. Nepal has done very well to stand, within a few years of the ending of the conflict, at the threshold of a constituent assembly.

This is the third big issue that makes up this defining moment. Nepal’s constituent assembly is reputed to be among the most inclusive such deliberative bodies anywhere in history. Most peoples have a presence in the assembly. It has in its power almost the ‘divine authority’ to grant thick legitimacy to the constitutional order that it will create for the new Nepal.

... contd.