Speculation has begun over how long the coalition government led by Madhav Kumar Nepal will survive. The prime minister has failed, three weeks after he took over, to give full and final shape to the cabinet. Terai-based parties are reconsidering their participation in the government asserting that the PM lacks the character required to head a coalition. Their frustration is rising because all the plum portfolios are being pocketed by two major coalition constituents — Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist — leaving the smaller parties with a fait accompli.

That only means political stability in Nepal is still far away, and that peace and democracy may not be institutionalised so easily. The hope that Madhav Nepal could provide a durable and effective coalition is thinning. Moreover, the country faces a serious law and order problem with Maoists reverting to the subversion of peace and harassing their political rivals.

In less than three weeks, the prime minister seems to have lost the faith of both President Rambaran Yadav and the Nepal army. With most political parties except the Nepali Congress reconsidering joining the government, and with Maoists actively engaged in paralysing the state, the president and Nepal army losing faith in the PM is not a healthy sign.

Madhav Nepal, considered a timid person, has failed to get his party — CPN-UML— to stand by President Yadav’s May 3 decision to stay Prachanda’s unilateral sacking of Army Chief Katawal and appoint Lt. Gen Kul Bahadur Khadka as the new chief. In fact, it was on the advice of Nepal and 17 other parties that the president took the controversial stand that led to Prachanda’s resignation as PM. While Gen R. Katawal continues to be chief of army staff following the president’s order, the present Cabinet has not even annulled Prachanda’s decision to make Lt. Gen Khadka the acting chief of the army. On the other hand, the PM asked Gen Katawal to shelve the move to constitute a court of inquiry to initiate court martial proceedings against Khadka on the charge of ‘breach of discipline, hobnobbing with politicians and conspiring to wreck the army from within’.

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