While the confrontation with the Public Accounts Committee members and the Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle’s bold challenge to the opposition, stating that he would not just resign from the finance portfolio but would withdraw from all of politics if even two rupees worth of misconduct could be proved against him were an act of political theatrics, it nonetheless revealed quite a few truths about what one gets ready for when spending one’s entire career inside global institutions such as the World Bank, UNDP, and the Anglo-American economics community and then coming to the Nepali parliament. That career included a stint as a World Bank staff economist, two terms at Nepal’s National Planning Commission, and co-authoring the UNDP’s 2013 Human Development Report.
There are quite weighty allegations related to the EV tax exemptions, and there is still no resolution in sight. Referring to the Auditor General’s report, opposition members argue that there was manipulation of the capacities of electric vehicle motors before the budget, resulting in approximately Rs 2.85 billion in illegal tax breaks and a total of Rs 3.77 billion in irregularities. The Kathmandu Post reported that there was an increase in the number of 776 electric vehicles imported in the three weeks leading up to the budget declaration, including some from Cimex, a local importer of the electric motors that claimed that it was nothing out of the ordinary and that it had nothing to do with the insider information about the budget. Opposition parties, including Nepali Congress, UML, and RPP, demanded an independent investigation in parliament, while the government created an investigating committee made up of the Finance Ministry, Department of Customs, and Armed Police Force officials.
Nothing of the sort proves his guilt. Wagle denied any improprieties on the record, and it would be unfair to treat any allegation that hasn’t been proved yet as a conclusive verdict. However, the specific nature of this allegation is irrelevant here; the thing that should be examined in detail is the specific defence of Wagle himself.
Strictly speaking, Wagle didn’t refuse an investigation in general. The fact is, there is a government committee. He just refused to create an independent parliamentary committee upon the request of the opposition. Instead of purely procedural arguments, he used his personal “moral commitment” that, he believes, exceeds that of the politicians. Moreover, he said that he was able to uncover some scandals of his opponents. At one point he even told the Finance Committee that a criminal syndicate tied to Nepal’s largest financial crimes was orchestrating the attacks against him and the Prime Minister. RPP’s Gyanendra Shahi, who once stood with RSP in opposition demanding this same kind of scrutiny, pointed out that the green ribbons his party wore for accountability seem to have been forgotten now that they hold power. To sum up, he made not only an internal investigation of the government possible but also appealed to his moral qualities as a person who can be regarded as the most credible in technical matters.
Such an approach seems quite logical and isn’t cynical at all. In international organisations, where Wagle worked for many years, credibility is personal and reputational. As scholarship on global governance has long noted, institutions like the World Bank generally lack the kind of parliamentary and electoral accountability that national governments face, relying instead on reputational and peer mechanisms (Grant and Keohane, 2005). The authority of a senior economist depends on such things as peer-reviewed papers, publishing works in Cambridge University Press, writing chapters for UN Human Development Reports or leading post-disaster needs assessments, which gather billions of dollars of foreign assistance. In that environment, appealing to one’s moral integrity is the standard approach since there is neither parliamentary opposition nor the independent Auditor General. The credibility is self-proving there.
The problem is that such an approach doesn’t work in the context of the Nepali parliamentary democracy, where reputational self-certification has never been enough. Nepal needed the Auditor General, the Public Accounts Committee and the opposition oversight because the personal assurances of powerful officials had a long history of failure before. A combination of internal executive investigation and personal moral pledge is absolutely different from the independent parliamentary investigation. Treating procedural requirements as personal attacks makes even the completely innocent minister look evasive in procedural matters.
That situation shows the main dilemma faced by the emerging technocratic political class of Nepal: the temptation to replace institutional accountability with personal moral authority. As soon as new political powers offer reforms, the contrast is their appeal. But when they are challenged, instead of full acceptance of the constitutional checks, they risk weakening these democratic institutions themselves. It is also worth remembering that RSP itself campaigned as the clean alternative to Nepal’s old political guard, which makes a scandal like this one not just a personal test for Wagle but a test of whether the party can hold itself to the same standard it promised to hold others to.
Wagle might be completely innocent about what the report of the Auditor General suggests. In that case, a simple agreement to an independent parliamentary inquiry would provide a much clearer answer than any moral assurance could. In a constitutional democracy that does not take anyone’s word or reputation on trust, being subject to the process is not a failure but the highest guarantee of integrity.