While the small fry get punished, the big fish get away. This is an oft-heard truism on the state of corruption in Nepal. In nearly all major corruption cases in the country, the involvement of top politicians, including the occupiers of the highest offices in the land, is suspected. Newspapers and other media outlets endlessly discuss their potential involvement. Yet when criminal charges are filed, only bureaucrats and low-ranking politicians are implicated while their political masters are left off the hook.
No more. On June 5, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA), Nepal’s constitutional anti-graft body, filed a corruption case against Madhav Kumar Nepal, a former prime minister, at the Special Court (constituted to handle specific cases). While serving as the prime minister in 2010, he is alleged to have facilitated a private company’s purchase of large tracts of land whose total area exceeded the ceiling set for such transactions. Then, two months after the purchase, the company was allowed, again illegally, to sell much of the land at a hefty profit.
The beneficiary of these Cabinet decisions? The Patanjali Yogpeeth and Ayurveda Company Nepal, a subsidiary of Baba Ramdev’s India-based Patanjali Ayurved.
There is a legal provision whereby certain philanthropic and non-profit organizations can buy land exceeding the ceiling. But despite Baba Ramdev’s image of a yogi on a mission to make the world a healthier place through yoga and ayurveda, it was a for-profit company that was being established in Nepal. Also, the companies that get exemptions on land purchases cannot sell the land for profit.
But why was Mr. Nepal implicated when all the previous prime ministers who too engaged in various dubious deals were left off the hook?
The CIAA Act states that “the commission will not conduct any investigation, inquiry, or take any action in relation to any policy decision collectively made by the council of ministers or any of its committees.” It is by stepping on this exemption for “policy decisions” that successive Cabinets had made all kinds of questionable decisions.
Although there is no consensus on the definition of a policy decision, it is broadly understood to mean a Cabinet decision made in the public interest under exceptional circumstances. The CIAA argued that the decision of Mr. Nepal’s Cabinet to first exempt Patanjali from the land ceiling rule and then to allow it to sell such land for profit cannot be termed a policy decision — the move benefited a particular company rather than the broader public. The ex-prime minister also stands accused of putting pressure on officials to allow the illegal selling of land.
The case against Mr. Nepal is unique and cannot be compared to other suspected cases of Cabinet-level corruption, the CIAA said. This is because in this case it was the prime minister — rather than some other member of the Cabinet — who directly tabled the proposal benefiting Patanjali.
Mr. Nepal’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist) as well as other parties in the opposition believe that the ex-prime minister has been framed. K.P. Sharma Oli, the current Nepali prime minister, reportedly cannot stand Mr. Nepal, his former colleague in the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxists Leninists (CPN-UML). Mr. Nepal had broken away from the CPN-UML to form the Unified Socialist party in order to escape Oli’s “authoritarian tendencies.” Of late, he has been vocal against the Oli government’s shortcomings.
Oli has long been trying to isolate Mr. Nepal from his Unified Socialist colleagues in order to bring them back into the CPN-UML fold and strengthen his hold as party chair. A bigger party would also increase his bargaining power in national politics.
Likewise, other opposition parties reckon the corruption case is a weapon with which to intimidate them; other ex-prime ministers who don’t belong to the current ruling coalition fear they could share Mr. Nepal’s fate.
Yet there is also no denying the need to make the occupants of the highest office in the land accountable for their decisions. Even if Oli leaned on the CIAA to act against Mr. Nepal, he knows that by allowing the anti-graft body to investigate a former head of government, he has made himself vulnerable as well: he too could some day be investigated for his decisions as prime minister.
Moreover, there will be no shortage of potential cases of corruption against other ex-prime ministers. Five-time prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was once convicted of corruption (albeit by a dubious agency working under the monarchy), while three-time prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal stands accused of embezzling funds for the upkeep of Maoist soldiers at the start of the Nepali peace process. Similarly, Baburam Bhattarai, another ex-prime minister, has been linked to a separate land scam.
The CIAA’s case against Mr. Nepal comes in the wake of growing public anger with the leaders of the top political parties — all former prime ministers. They are accused of running a syndicate in order to rule the country by turns, as they keep at bay all other contenders for the top post. In the process, they are believed to amass riches for themselves and build copious election war chests for their mother parties. The new corruption case could help change this corrosive perception.
Whatever its outcome, Mr. Nepal’s legal case could set a precedent for the current and future prime ministers, who will now need to be more judicious in their decision-making. The culture of making arbitrary decisions and labeling them “policy decisions” that are immune from CIAA investigation had a devastating effect on the health of Nepali democracy and the public’s perception of democratic leaders.
So, if the CIAA is indeed acting impartially, more and more Nepalis are asking, which ex-prime minister is next in its firing line?