‘Nepali Congress should neither be nervous nor complacent’

Nepali Congress Central Committee Member Minendra Rijal is reputed for his straight and scholarly take on issues of national interest. He is also a strong internal critic of the Congress. The Post’s Anil Giri and Nishan Khatiwada sat down with him to discuss recent rumours about a change in ruling coalition as well as internal Congress politics after most recent national elections and by-polls.

What are the messages of the recent bypolls in three constituencies in which the Nepali Congress fared badly. What lessons did the party learn?

The results and messages of the bypolls do not differ from those of the general elections. The Rastriya Swatantra Party gained one seat from the bypolls—yet people have been saying that the party has doubled its presence since the general elections because the constituency in Tanahun it won was a Congress bastion. Swarnim Wagle, who won from the constituency, was a former Congress professional and his defection to the RSP and win in the bypolls were important. His victory is a reason people have been overreading the election outcomes and for the amplification of the general elections’ message.

The Congress itself seems to be in a sorry state. The central committee has not been convened for long and several party departments are only partly full. Sister organisations have also not gotten concrete shapes. How do you rectify this state of affairs?

Our party is not in a sorry state, but in a sound state. Yes, there are challenges. We need to do a lot of work. You might have seen a disarray owing to two phenomena in party leadership. First, there is a feeling of complacency. If you are complacent, you look only at the positive aspects: “We are the largest party running governments in all tiers,” our leaders could say.

The second phenomenon is nervousness—the urge that the party needs to be changed in a revolutionary way, otherwise it has no future. In Latin, “experiri” means combination of experience and willingness to experiment. Neither should we be complacent nor feel the party needs to change everything and experiment with something entirely new. If we combine the experience and willingness to experiment with party leadership, we will get back the support base and attract the younger generation. As such, we will be in good shape not only in terms of running the government but also ensuring that we will fare better in the next elections should we run single-handedly.

There are rumours of a break up in the current ruling coalition. Even the Congress general secretaries are talking about a change of guard.

I have not heard them talk about the need to change the current coalition. But they sometimes sound impatient. It seems our party president is being a little complacent and the general secretaries a little impatient. We need to work on this and combine the experience of Nepali Congress with the willingness to experiment.

We are very happy with the ruling coalition. There is no reason we should move away from it. Once the budget is passed in all tiers, we can work based on the Common Minimum Programme and budget, and hence enhance governance. Moreover, CPN-UML leaders have been portraying themselves as “saintly”, unwilling to join the government, and happy with their opposition status. Even if we wish to, how can we entice the “saintly” par

Reference:

https://kathmandupost.com/interviews/2023/06/25/nepali-congress-should-neither-be-nervous-nor-complaisant