A transition to democracy is never smooth, as Nepal is learning now. With the election of a Madhesi politician who was the Nepali Congress nominee as the president, a Madhesi Jhanadikar Forum nominee as the vice president, and the Unified Marxist-Leninist candidate as the new speaker, the previous ruling elite have ensured that the Maoists have to struggle every step of the way during the constitution-making process. The Maoists, the single-largest party in the Constituent Assembly, have called it the victory of an “unholy alliance”.

What the Maoists find galling is that the NC, UML and the MJF (which reneged on a previous deal with the Maoists) reached an agreement on the day of the voting that ensured defeat for the independent activists that the Maoists had supported.

The current division of power may be a blessing in disguise as the four major parties have a representative each in positions of power. What all parties have to learn from the presidential experience is that betrayals are part of the democratic process. They have experienced the first taste of horse-trading and betrayals that characterise modern democracies, particularly the sub-continental variety — vividly demonstrated in the recent trust vote in the Indian Parliament.

Any transition to democracy requires participants to compromise. By its very nature, a compromise means that a party will experience a partial win and a partial loss at the same time. As the Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero said, both reason and justice must somehow be diluted to meet the needs of the political life. For instance, the Maoists should assess how their goal of social justice through land reforms can be integrated with the demands and concerns of the old elite, many of whom belong to the landed classes.

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