Namrata Sharma

The oldest and simplest justification to have a government ruling a country is for protecting citizens from violence. Thomas Hobbes, an English philosopher, is considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. He is well-known for his book Leviathan published in 1651 which describes that there would be a world of unrelenting insecurity without governments to provide the safety of law and order, protecting citizens from each other and from foreign foes.
In Nepal, we now have a government elected by the citizens giving them majority votes with hopes of ending insecurity, violence and leading the nation towards prosperity. Since long, Nepalis had sought for a stable government that could lead the nation towards prosperity. When two major political parties with left alignment joined and asked for votes, the latter reflected on various stages. The parties initiated the process of stabilising the country’s political situation and transitioning out of the people’s movement. They then must have decided that their unification could have a strategy of finally developing the country. They thus entrusted their votes to them to govern the nation and expected the opposition to be a watchdog over good governance in the country.

Expectations
However, the daily row that politicians seem to be waging against each other, both within the government and in the opposition, makes us wonder if our politicians are indeed qualified and committed to govern the nation. The majority of the Nepali people are sure to be thinking likewise. Threats of break up and patch up is something that the citizens do not want to hear, but are subjected to almost every single day! This must stop.
The government needs to focus on achieving long-term development goals by putting aside inter-party rivalry. Similarly, the opposition needs to focus more on future goals of the country where they could play a role rather than creating an unstable situation. All major political parties and current day leaders have exposed themselves time after time on the greed and corrupt mindsets that does not reflect the commitment they shouldered while staging a revolution against a feudal system.
In ancient times whoever governed had the right to take somebody’s life and no one could oppose. Aristotle expressed: “What was not commanded by the government was forbidden.” As civilisation progressed and religion and feudal systems came into play, all religions had certain rules and regulations governing the believers under that religion. The state had its own rules and regulations too. Many a times these conflicted and one won over the other. Slowly democratic practices started surfacing after citizens began launching movements against systems all over the world. Then, the value of securing the right to life and existence started becoming the first aim of governments. As people started raising voice in different civilisations through various centuries, citizens demanded the establishment of their freedom as humans. With this progress in human civilisation, it started becoming more and more obvious that life exists for exercising the value of liberty both in terms of natural and civil rights.
With the advent of Marxist concept of the state, the vision of state as a product of class warfare came into existence. While Aristotle believed that human perfection was possible only within a political society, Marx believed that perfection of humanity would actually be possible only with the abolition of political society. These are two opposing political philosophies with juxtaposition theories. However, even within the Marxist philosophy, it is believed that before the final disposal of the state, a forceful use of governmental power is justified in order to hasten humankind’s progress. This, in itself, is a contradiction of what the Marxist philosophy actually stands for!
Nepal has gone through cycles of changes, including the abolishing of feudal autocratic systems, establishment and re-establishments of democratic systems, and has also tided over civil unrest and Maoist movements. The country has now gone for the federal system which promises to ensure rights of all citizens of the country no matter which class, caste, race, religion, colour, gender, or community they belonged to. So what do the citizens want now? They simply seek a path towards development which has no hurdles of corruption and individual greed or personal self-interest of political leaders. The citizens also want the government to put a system of protection of their rights to live safely and have a livelihood to lead them towards wellbeing and a prosperous country.

Visionary leadership
Nepal’s constitutional democracy has provided mass participation of its citizens in electing their government. The national and sub-national ruling system is now well placed all over the country. However, their rules and regulations are yet to be finalised and implemented. Instead of petty personal interests and mudslinging against each other, the political leaders now need to emerge as visionaries who can lead their voters out of the current difficulties imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and stop the country from being pushed into a dire state of recession.
Inter- and intra-party rivalries must be put to an end. The government, in this new age, needs not only to perform as a protector to save its citizens from violence within the country and from outside but also should start investing in developing capacity of citizens so that they can be self-sufficient in knowledge and resources. To do this, the first step is to end corruption and individual greed over the national sovereignty.

(Namrata Sharma is a senior journalist and women rights advocate and can be reached at namrata1964@yahoo.com Twitter handle: NamrataSharmaP)