Free media and drafts of history

Abhi Subedi

Free media discourse did not receive as much attention from parties, governments and civil society as it should have after the political change of April/06. But it has received attention in recent weeks as an issue of freedom. Nepal government's first united response to Constituent Assembly (CA) elections came like a jolt about a month ago. The spokesman of the government indicated that they had agreed in principle that certain codes should be introduced to limit the media reporting about the CA elections in November 2007.
The recent closures of some newspaper distributions by Maoist trade unions and resumptions following a court order and the flexibility shown by the Maoist information minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara and the trade union near the CPN (Maoist) and the commencement of fast-onto-death by a democratic leader Birendra Dahal propelled by the closure of HBC FM brought the free media discourse to a new height. After these developments, two questions rose like cyclones in my mind. First, why focus on press restrictions before anything else? Second, who is wary of free media in Nepal?

Nepali free media was not created by political parties or governments who have their own mouth organs that they play whenever they feel like and invite readers to appreciate their composition and read their solipsistic notations. Little do such organ creators realise that free media's historical effect is immediate and vibrant.
About the historicity of free press, a senior British journalist John Lloyd says, “Journalists give the first draft of history: historians may do a quite different draft, but most people don't read the histories-so for them it's the first and last” (What the media are doing to our politics 37).
The first draft writers of the current, turbulent Nepali history are the media. The old history writers' books are shelved. They do speak very little now. So writing the drafts of history by free media has become the most important activity in the politically vibrant Nepal. Several native and foreign history writers have been using the Nepali free press to formally write the second draft of the history of this country's turbulent times. The free Nepali press --its journalists, columnists and freelancers have mutually written the first drafts.

Free media was created by middle class youths who found it as an important means of creating cultural and intellectual space for themselves. They came into existence with the awareness of their in-between-ness- the sense of being below and above, between global and local and founded the free media to express their world view. Their free press activity shook the class above and taught the people below how to be assertive.
Media entrepreneurs gave them freedom for obvious reasons. Little have the political parties realised that. Free media successfully challenged the ardent autocratic regime of the modern times in Nepal in April/06. The role of free media and the journalists was the most important one. They took many risks, disregarded life threats and moved under the barrage of batons and bullets to bring news to the public.
There are some caveats. The Maoists were among the first to realise the power of free press because they chose the free press to publish their important views. The Nepali Congress government jailed Editor Yubaraj Ghimire and publisher Kailash Shiroia of Kantipur for publishing Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai's essay in Kantipur in June 2001 and put a temporary ban on free speech. But the free press prevailed. The free press helped the Maoists to come to the open through their constant attention to their politics, their histrionics, commitments and programmes. Some free Nepali weeklies devote not less than 40 percent of their coverage on the Maoists in each issue.

It is ironical, therefore, that the Maoists should look askance at the free press today and suspect that they may have been funded by foreign agents. Examples abound. Kanak Dixit was detained by King Gyanendra's government for defying the restriction to use IT to talk to the foreign press. Other media groups were attacked and their facilities and technologies were looted and vandalised by government agents. Journalists were gagged by militias and governments' armed personnel over the last decade.
Parties' ambivalent attitude towards the free press continues. But the reality is that if the free press leaves a day without reporting the ongoing minuscule U-turns of the parties even today, the political process will move back to square one. The free press has been overtly or covertly alerting the mass and the parties.
What does it mean then to develop hostile attitude towards free press by the government and political parties today? Can a party dream to rule absolutely tomorrow by suppressing free media? Nobody should work with such imaginaries. People are so vigilant that they will not accept any regressive reporting either. So, why instead of sorting out the main political agenda, mutually working for a law and order situation and going to the villages with manifestos as the chief election commissioner has been pleading them to do, are the political parties and government fantasising a muted and muffled press?
The writers of the first drafts of history have great responsibilities as much as the governments to save a free media in Nepal.

Source: The Kathmandu Post, August 22, 2007

State restructuring

Ananta Raj Poudyal

Ethnic tensions have surfaced in Nepal with the recognition of plural rights that had been denied by the discriminatory policies of the state. One foreign observer has labelled Nepal the “ethnic turntable of Asia”. But the state has heretofore failed to recognise its plural identity. Though some feudal practices were repealed in the 1950s, the concerned policies could not be implemented as the political parties lacked vision for an inclusive democratic process; the obscurantists and stay-putters did not like the progressive policies; and for 30 years, the partyless Panchayat polity denied even basic rights to the people. Surprisingly, the 1990 democratic constitution inherited some of the legacies of the feudal culture, only serving to perpetuate the underlying ethos of Hindu elites.

At long last, the parliamentary declaration last April declared Nepal a secular state. The latent ethnic tensions flared up. It is noteworthy that ethnic divisions are enduring, persistent and emotional, and show a high propensity to open violence. In this context, issues of heightened ethnic nationalism, regional autonomy, federal state, right to self-determination on the basis of race, language, culture and geography have appeared as the thorny issues in the restructuring process. The Maoists exploited the latent ethnonationalism and urged the ethnic groups to rise against the existing social order. It suggested federal structure on the basis of ethnicity.

The Tarai identity crisis is deep and divisive, tending to attract external predators and regressive forces that have exploited internal rifts, adding fuel to the fire. Nepal Sadbhawana Party along with the Madeshi Janadhikar Forum has claimed a union of 20 districts in the plain as a federal unit. The Chure Vhawar region too is clamouring for self-autonomy. Members of Parliament representing the political parties of the Tarai have collectively challenged the validity of the constituency delimitation commission report on the ground that it is biased and discriminatory with regard to the participation of the Tarai people in constituent assembly (CA) elections.

The National Federation of Indigenous Nationalities has been demanding full proportional representation system in the CA polls, based on ethnicity and modalities of restructuring on regional and ethnic basis. However, the government did not agree to proportional representation based on ethnicity and the proposal of electing at least one representative from each of the 59 ethnic nationalities in the upcoming Constituent Assembly polls. Rather, in response, the interim parliament passed a resolution for semi-proportional system under which 240 seats have been set aside for representation on the basis of first-past the-post system and 240 seats on the basis of the parallel system. The Hill-Tarai dichotomy has also appeared as a sensitive issue which has remained as a great psychological barrier to the emotional integration of Nepal over the years.

Those societies that have been successful in reducing ethno-political conflicts have allowed the ethnic groups to share power through democratic process and plural identity has been maintained on the basis of minimum value-consensus. When ethnic groups are provided equal opportunities for sharing the valued resources, they generally function according to the rules of the political game. At the other extreme, when the state responds to ethnic mobilisation with policies of exclusion and repression, ethno-political violence is bound to flare up into a bigger conflict. Provisions of consociational democracy (like in Belgium, Norway and Sweden), federalism (the USA, Switzerland and Canada), electoral reform in favour of minority groups, preferential programmes or quota system, and direct and representative democracy have proven effective in containing ethno-political unrest.

Conflict is a natural phenomenon in any society and violence erupts when state proves unable to establish distributive justice with regard to allocation of goods and services, honours, status and opportunities of various kinds. Conflict is a means for different ethnic groups toobtain the best position in the society. The theory of conflict management recommends developing democratic institutions and formation of civil society and citizens’ participation in the policy-making process as effective strategies for containing ethno-political violence.If political parties fail to understand the gravity of ethnic problems while restructuring the society, the already strained harmony could break apart. A horizontal model ensures reduction of inter-ethnic and inter-regional conflicts and antagonism and keeps the level of positive interaction and solidarity high. The model provides equal space and opportunity to all discrete groups in the collective process of nation-building.

Source: The Himalayan Times, June 25, 2007