Girija Prasad Koirala dead at age 86

Girijababu Gone
NepaliTimes, 20-Mar-2010
Kunda Dixit

Girija Prasad Koirala passed away at his daughter's home this morning after going into a coma.

Girija Prasad Koirala, freedom fighter, four-time prime minister and the architect of Nepal's peace process, has died at age 86 at the home of his daughter and deputy prime minister, Sujata Koirala. He had been suffering from severe respiratory disease for the past few years, but his condition suddenly deteriorated last Sunday.

Throughout his rollercoaster career, Koirala proved himself to be a wily politician and a tenacious defender of democracy who stood up to authoritarians on both the left and right of Nepal's political spectrum. But the Nepali Congress president was also considered a manipulative leader who sidelined all rivals within his party and, paradoxically, was blamed for the erosion of the gains of the 1990 Jana Andolan. The political disarray of the 1990s was also seen as one of the reasons the Maoists rose up to take up arms against the state.

Perhaps Koirala's two most notable actions were to stand up to King Gyanendra after his creeping coup in 2002, and to get the parliamentary parties to sign the 12-point agreement with the Maoists in 2005 in New Delhi. While the UML and even the Deuba faction of the NC joined the royal government after 2002, Koirala was firmly against compromising with the king. "I can agree with anyone, but I will compromise with no one on democracy," Koirala declared in 2005. He was initially in favour of retaining a constitutional monarchy, and was the strongest proponent of the 'baby king' proposal to put Birendra's grandson Hridayendra on the throne. But by end 2007, even this position became untenable.

The 12-point agreement with the Maoists was a path-breaking deal that paved the way for the April 2006 uprising and the brought the rebels out into the streets in peaceful protests that achieved what a decade of war and the death of 16,000 Nepalis could not. Koirala took it upon himself to ensure that the Maoists abandoned violence and joined peaceful mainstream politics, and he worked ceaselessly to this end. Even though he was accused by many within his party of giving too much ground to the Maoists after 2006, and criticised for allying with Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal in the last few months of his life so his daughter Sujata could become prime minister, Koirala used to say privately he was just trying to make sure the Maoists didn't go back to the jungle.

As a young man, Girija Prasad Koirala was always in the shadow of his charismatic brother, BP. Even BP wasn't impressed with his younger brother, preferring niece Shailaja Acharya as his successor. He barely mentions him in his biography Atmabritanta, only going as far as calling him a good 'hawaldar', a footsoldier, who nonetheless played a role in the NC's armed struggle against the Ranas.

After King Mahendra's 1960 coup, Koirala was involved in the NC's brief tryst with armed struggle against the absolute monarchy. His organisational skills served him well as he flitted back and forth across the Nepal-India border to procure weapons, and he was involved in the hijacking of a Royal Nepal Airlines flight ferrying cash from Biratnagar to Kathmandu. Koirala even admitted in a TV interview to having printed counterfeit Indian currency at the time.

Given this history of involvement in armed struggle, Koirala said in another interview last year, he felt he understood better where the Maoists came from and why it was so difficult for them to give up a culture of violence and intimidation. But for someone who devoted his life to the struggle for democracy, the biggest tragedy for the country was that Koirala couldn't rise above petty partisan politics and the promotion of his family after 1990. The NC was in power for ten of the twelve years between 1990 and 2002 and Koirala was prime minister for many of those years. Yet his leadership was marred by corruption scandals involving the leasing of jets by the national airline and allegations of nepotism. He surrounded himself with questionable advisers, and many of those he relied on became bitter rivals. Most said they were turned off by his autocratic style. Koirala recognised this, and once said: "I can take care of my enemies, but god save me from my friends."

After the peace process and the Maoist electoral victory of 2008, Koirala was assured by Dahal that he would be the first president of the new republic. But Dahal doublecrossed Koirala by promoting Ram Raja Prasad Singh as his party's candidate, and when he couldn't muster the votes Koirala's own colleague from the NC, Ram Baran Yadav, became president. Koirala was privately very bitter about this turn of events. Never one to give up, he tried till the very end to ensure a political comeback either for himself or for his daughter, even if it meant aligning with his former arch enemies, the Maoists.

It was such short-sighted manipulations that will mean Koirala will be remembered less as a great leader than as a political boss, despite Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh's labelling him "one of Asia's greatest statesmen" in 2006.

In the coming weeks, the media will be flush with speculation as to what will happen following Koirala's death, which was long expected. With such an influential yet divisive player gone, some will be hoping the Grand Old Party will present a more united front and return to its social-democratic ideals. This may be premature, given the kangresi penchant for infighting. But there is a chance the passing of the strongman will encourage consensus politics within the Nepali Congress, and allow it to redefine itself as the party of the people rather than a clan-based political entity.