Nepal = Egypt?

You have to start worrying when Egypt becomes a byword for fake elections:

Indiadaily.com - Nepal on its way to become Egypt? Seven major parties including Nepali Congress Party will join the boycott of April 2007 parliamentary elections:

Nepal still is dragging its foot on bringing multi-party democracy back. The King is stubborn and there are signs that he and his regime is trying to bring a puppet parliament in session that will follow his orders like that of Mubarak of Egypt. Constitutional multi-party democracy can be a joke if the supreme person controls the election. In that way Nepal and Egypt will have perfect similarity.

From an Indian newspaper.

4 Responses to “Nepal = Egypt?”
SP Says:
October 20th, 2005 at 1:23 pm
It’s a good analogy, just substitute Maoists for Islamists. The media is regularly muffled in Nepal and inconvenient journalists and opposition figured regularly arrested. The significant difference however is that they did have multi-party democracy for a while and so it’s harder to keep the parties quiet and dependent on the regime. And the opposition parties and Maoists have started to cooperate tactically, albeit warily.

The transnational components of the struggle between the King and Maoists are interesting - the US and India both financed the King and army to fight the Maoists (esp. as the Maoists are active across the border in north Indian states like Bihar), the US in a leftover knee-jerk Cold War way, and India (especially under the BJP Hindu nationalist government) for stability and also because Nepal is a Hindu kingdom and the VHP/World Hindu Council, part of the Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar, loves the king. Even the current Indian central govt, which has leftists in it, has resumed military aid after cutting it off following the royal coup, behaving very much like the US towards Egypt in its carrot and stick approach to Nepal.

Jonathan Edelstein Says:
October 20th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
I hate to say it, but I’ve also made the Egypt analogy with respect to Swaziland - specifically, to members of banned democracy groups who have run for parliament as indpendents Brotherhood-style.

Issandr El Amrani Says:
October 20th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
I’m not doubting that there may be similarities, just intrigued that Egypt is becoming a reference when it comes to dodgy elections.

SP Says:
October 20th, 2005 at 10:56 pm
Yeah, maybe the Egyptian model will form a new category of authoritarian regimes - the semi-liberalised half-assed remote-controlled multipartyism model.