Martin Luther King, Jr., wrote in his famous 1963 Letter from Birmingham Jail: “I have come to the regrettable conclusion that the greatest obstacle to the liberation of the black race is not the ‘White Counselor’ or the ‘Ku Klux Klan’ (extremist group), but rather the ‘White moderate’, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice. Who prefers the ‘negative peace’, the absence of tension, to the ‘positive peace’, the presence of justice.”

Six decades later, in 2025, in Nepal, exactly the same arguments were heard in the neighborhood. Some of the ‘uncles’ who had become loyal to the old political parties without political awareness could be heard in one voice – ‘What peace and stability there was in the country, development was happening albeit slowly, there was no chaos like now.’

Wishing for such ‘negative peace’ because of one’s class and privilege is not only harmful to the future of the country, it also mocks the working class and poor people, who do not have such class privileges.

The very idea that stability is ‘inherent’ in an ‘elite democracy’ like ours is flawed. The proof that a democracy like ours is only for the elite and bourgeois class is evident from its power structure and the process by which it reaches power. When the Parliament building or the Legislature building caught fire, a large amount of blame was placed on the protesting youth. But let’s think for a moment – ​​did those buildings ever look like places to serve the people? The objective answer is – ‘they were not visible.’

Those buildings looked like such grand palaces, where the common people had to be afraid to even walk past. Still, Singha Durbar is so remote and inaccessible that even to go there for some legitimate and very ordinary work, one has to ‘know’ someone with access to power. How ironic it is that in a country, even to enter a government building or to prepare a simple document, one needs someone with access to power.

Such an inaccessible and terrifying power structure can never be ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’. It is only for the rich and the elite. And, the election process is only a means of deciding who will join the group of those elites in the coming days.

Therefore, for the reasons mentioned above, there does not seem to be any basis for any structural reform and optimism in the upcoming elections. It is natural for young people like me, who have been tormented by years of oligarchy, to be fascinated by the ‘new face’. But let’s look back at history, the generation before us was also similarly optimistic about the ‘new face’ of that time after the end of feudalism.

The reality is that even if some positive changes are seen for a short time, it will not make any fundamental difference in the material condition of the middle class, working class and homeless people. In a country like Nepal with disorderly urbanization and underdeveloped trade, it is not difficult to improve the external optics. But the power structure of bourgeois democracy guarantees that it will eventually turn into an oligarchy. Most democratic countries in the world have now turned into oligarchy, and Nepal is no exception.

This guarantee that the living standards of the common people will not improve comes from observing history. Feudalism did not disappear on its own in history. It was removed through several violent bourgeois revolutions. The merchants and advisors (burghers) of that time strategized and overthrew the monarchy and established the current capitalism. This is actually an advanced form of feudalism, where all resources and means are controlled by a limited elite. The only difference is that the number of rulers is slightly higher than in feudalism.

The biggest proof of this reality is the ‘commercialization of justice’ in capitalist democracy. If we look at the world environment, people accused of various crimes like Donald Trump can become the president of the world’s most powerful country, the United States. Even when people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos exploit their workers inhumanely, they are respected instead of criticized.

In the case of Nepal as well, the society has generally accepted that ‘so-and-so is rich, he won’t go to jail’ or ‘he is the son of a great leader, nothing will happen to him’. People openly express their desire to earn unlimited wealth even to avoid the law.

The solution to this problem is not easy, because it is not a glitch in the system, but rather the system is working the way it is supposed to work. When law becomes a service that can be purchased by capital, then democracy has no meaning. For the elite, there is really no law in the world. And new faces cannot change this because the power structure of this bourgeois parliament does not allow them to do so.

The centrists want a stable and stress-free ‘negative peace’ because they are protected from the ‘slow violence’ hidden within the status quo. Their class position makes the real impact of bourgeois democracy felt only late. That is why their anger was seen only two decades after the end of the monarchy, while the working class suffered equally under feudalism and after. Nothing has changed for them.

Because the power structures before and after 2063 did not care about them, they only looked after their class interests. This is the essence of neoliberalism. When the middle class is ensnared by little social access and ‘just’ amenities, they do not join hands with the lower classes to overthrow the existing power structure. They focus only on personal advancement and success rather than solidarity.