Nepal riot police rout protesters seeking restoration of monarchy

From Reuters:

KATHMANDU, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Police in Nepal on Thursday used rattan sticks, tear gas and water cannon to scatter thousands of protesters demanding the restoration of the monarchy abolished 15 years ago.

The "Citizens' Campaign" protesters say governments in place since the monarchy was scrapped, as part of a deal ending a Maoist insurgency, have failed to live up to commitments to develop one of the world’s poorest countries.

Protesters tried to dismantle a police barricade on the outskirts of Kathmandu and march into the centre of the capital, prompting riot police to intervene and repel the crowd, witnesses said.

"Police only tried to contain a huge anarchic crowd of protesters," said Jitendra Basnet, the top official in the city administration of Kathmandu, in whose downtown area public protests are banned.

Some police officers were injured by stones thrown by protesters, said Basnet.

Durga Prasai, coordinator of the Citizens’ Campaign, said about 10 protesters were injured in the melee, two of them critically.

"We want the republican system abolished and the monarchy to be restored," he said, vowing to continue agitating for that objective and calling for a general strike in Kathmandu, home to about four million people, on Friday.

A specially elected assembly abolished the 239-year-old monarchy in 2008 under terms of an accord that ended a Maoist insurgency, which killed 17,000 people between 1996 and 2006, and established a federal republic.

But political instability has afflicted Nepal since the end of the monarchy with over 10 changes of government, hobbling economic development and forcing millions of young people to seek work mainly in Malaysia, South Korea and the Middle East.

Former Maoist rebel chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who still goes by his nom de guerre of Prachanda ("Fierce"), is now Nepal's prime minister heading a coalition with the centrist Nepali Congress party.

Gyanendra, the last king of the Himalayan mountain country wedged between India and China, lives as a commoner with his family in Kathmandu.

Reporting by Gopal Sharma; editing by Mark Heinrich

Monarchy and elections Part 2: Portugal

    This will be a short post. I'm going to take this opportunity to promote the People's Monarchist Party for the Portuguese legislative elections that are coming up on January 30th.

    They currently hold no seats in the Legislative Assembly of the Republic but they do hold two seats in the Legislative Assembly of the Azores. It appears that they are the only (or at least the largest) organized monarchist political movement in Portugal. Restore the Kingdom of Portugal!

Restore the Monarchy Part 1: Montenegro

    It is known that I support the return of old monarchies and the creation of new monarchies and today I was reading the Wikipedia article for sub-national monarchies when I read the one sentence mention of Montenegro. The brief blurb spoke of something called the Law on the Status of the Descendants of the Petrović Njegoš Dynasty. The page for the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty states that:

In 2011, Montenegro recognized an official role for the Royal House of Petrović-Njegoš in Montenegro: to promote Montenegrin identity, culture and traditions through cultural, humanitarian and other non-political activities, which has been interpreted as a "creeping restoration" of the monarchy.

    Further down the page it states:

On the 12 July 2011 the Parliament of Montenegro adopted the Law on the Status of the Descendants of the Petrović Njegoš Dynasty.

The law "regulates the important issues regarding the status of the descendants of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty, for the historical and moral rehabilitation of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty for whom their dethroning was contrary to the Constitution of the Kingdom of Montenegro, a violent act of annexation in the year 1918." (Article 1).

The law recognises the descendants of King Nikola I in the male line and their wives as the descendants of the Petrović-Njegoš dynasty (Article 2), and appoints the eldest male heir, namely Prince Nikola II, as the representative of the dynasty (Article 5). It also affirms the House law of the dynasty by defining the succession to the headship of the dynasty as being passed down through the "male heir of the oldest male heir" (Article 5).

The law protects the use of the heraldic symbols of the dynasty by the representative of the dynasty, Prince Nikola II (Article 6).

Article 8 allows for members of the dynasty to obtain Montenegrin citizenship and also to be dual-nationals of other nations without losing their Montenegrin citizenship. This is of particular relevance today as all of the members of the dynasty also hold French citizenship.

The law also creates the non-political (Article 10) Petrović-Njegoš Foundation (Article 9), an organisation chaired by Prince Nikola II (Article 10), with its aim to "affirm the Montenegrin culture and participation in humanitarian and development activities in the interest of Montenegro and its traditions" (Article 9).

From Montenegro's exchequer, the law allocates 4.3 million euros over a seven-year period to the Petrović-Njegoš Foundation (Article 11). In addition, Prince Nikola II is entitled to a monthly income equivalent to the gross monthly earnings of the President of Montenegro (Article 16).

The Petrovic-Njegoš Foundation has its seat in Montenegro. "The Descendants of the dynasty are given the continuous use of the house of King Nikola I of Montenegro in Njeguši...its gardens...and meadow-land."

"Descendants of the dynasty will have built for them a family home in Cetinje...and be given an apartment in Podgorica" (Article 12).

To carry out their official functions Prince Nikola II has the right to use State objects and resources and "the exclusive right of use of the first storey" of the Petrović Palace (Dvorac Petrovića) in Podgorica, "and when protocol requires, use of the ground floor with priority over other users" (Article 13).

The law allows for Prince Nikola II to act as a representative of the Government of Montenegro and perform other protocol and non-political functions (Article 7). The first such undertaking was made by the Prince in July 2011 when he represented the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Igor Lukšić, at the requiem of Otto von Habsburg, former Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary.

When performing functions on behalf of the Government, Prince Nikola II and the other members of the dynasty are afforded full State protocol (Article 15).

    To me this reads as Montenegro being a constitutional monarchy in everything but name. If only they would go one step further and make it official.

Monarchy and elections Part 1: Koruna Česká

    In any given nation there are numerous political parties. Most are some flavor social democrat or liberal conservative with some communist and ethnic nationalist parties thrown in. Perhaps the most rare of all are the monarchist parties; they are few in number and those that actively participate in politics are rarer still. One of those active parties exists in Czechia and is known as Koruna Česká or Czech Crown (Monarchist Party of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia).

    Koruna Česká is running in the 2021 Czech legislative election on October 8-9. Read more here.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy and Republicanism Part 1

    I was reading a political discussion a few days ago when a commenter posted a link to the Wikipedia page for something called the "Iron Law of Oligarchy". I had never heard about this before so I read into it and the first paragraph of the article states that:

"rule by an elite, or oligarchy, is inevitable as an "iron law" within any democratic organization as part of the "tactical and technical necessities" of organization"

     The article goes on to state that:

"all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies"

and

"since no sufficiently large and complex organization can function purely as a direct democracy, power within an organization will always get delegated to individuals within that group, elected or otherwise."

    I developed a similar thought to this a few years ago. I came to the conclusion that democracy can not work at a national level, especially in a country as large as the United States, and thus it should not exist beyond the city-level. I guess it goes with the saying the people should care more about local elections than national as they have a more direct effect on their lives.

    The article includes the line:

"Michels stated that the official goal of representative democracy of eliminating elite rule was impossible, that representative democracy is a façade legitimizing the rule of a particular elite, and that elite rule, which he refers to as oligarchy, is inevitable."

    I had a similar thought that mirrored this, that democracy was little more than a way to get people to consent to oligarchy. The fact that political dynasties can exist in a democracy is proof of this, ranging from the Clinton and Bush families of today all the way back to the Washington and Adams families at America's founding in the 18th century.

The Role of Monarchy as a Stabilizing Force

    On August 15, 2021 the nation of Afghanistan fell to Taliban forces unopposed, nearly twenty years after being deposed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Modern Afghanistan's problems can be traced back to the 1973 coup d'état that saw Mohammed Daoud Khan overthrow his cousin King Mohammed Zahir Shah and the Kingdom of Afghanistan. In five short years Khan himself would be overthrown and killed during the communist Saur Revolution. The following year communist Afghanistan, along with the Soviet Union, would find themselves embroiled in a nine-ear long war against rural, Islamist insurgents that saw the Soviets withdraw by 1989 and the communist Afghan government collapse in 1992. After a civil war throughout the 1990's the Taliban established themselves as the new government before being overthrown by U.S. forces in 2001.

American helicopter evacuating embassy personnel in August 2021

    From the Cromwellian atrocities in Ireland during the Commonwealth period to the Reign of Terror in 1790's France. From the Russian Civil War and the Red Terror of the Soviet Union to the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. And finally the fall of the Afghan monarchy was the beginning of 50 years of unending chaos and violence for the country. It's clear that the replacement of monarchy with the inherent instability of republicanism leads to violence and political extremism. I leave you with this quote by Winston Churchill:

"This war would never have come unless, under American and modernizing pressure, we had driven the Habsburgs out of Austria and Hungary and the Hohenzollerns out of Germany. By making these vacuums we gave the opening for the Hitlerite monster to crawl out of its sewer on to the vacant thrones."

Reject republicanism, return to monarchy.