First, a primer on the game of chicken for those who have not come across this phrase: In Game Theory, Chicken Game is a particular variant of two-person game. The game is better explained by giving an every day analogy our truck drivers face. Suppose, you are driving in speed a big truck in a narrow lane. You saw, in the opposite direction, your opponent too is driving a similar truck, at a similar speed, coming towards you. Both of you have two choices:
- don’t care and let the trucks meet inevitable, fatal collide or
- give a side to the incoming truck and avoid the accident.
If you opt (a) you are a macho man and if you opt (b) you become a chicken. This is how the name of the game is derived.
What would happen if one of the drivers pulled out his steering wheel and threw it out, visible to the opponent? Obviously, the in-coming driver will have no other option than to let you win the game. This is called “locked-in” tactics. By pulling out the steering wheel visibly to your opponent throwing it out, you have literally locked-in the other guy in the negotiation process.
Ordinance-Governance
If you read carefully recent imbroglio over the President and the PM related to ratification of half a dozen ordinances, strategically issued after with-holding parliament session that has already been announced, is basically a chicken game played at a different level. Similar to our truck drivers, the President and the PM have, basically, two options - (a) approve or (b) don’t approve the ordinances. If you approve, you are a chicken, if you don’t you end up with an inevitable accident. In this case, the impeachment motion that is being hinted in the social media. I suppose, outgoing PM Sriman Srimati Sushila Karki suggests to play macho - least forgetting the fact that without the President’s intervention, her electoral government could have collapsed long time back, sans elections. There is a level of stupidity among our intellectuals. Sorry for that.
Out of six ordinances, affecting dozens of laws, the President has carefully picked and approved two ordinances - related to cooperative management and public procurement laws. I don’t call this an act of pulling out steering wheel, as illustrated above, rather a piece-meal approach similar to honking or flashing headlights - signaling your opponent of your arrival.
Placing hard and soft balls together
First, the President was placed with two ordinances - one related to altering decision making framework of the Constitutional Council and other related to cooperative management. First ball is a hard ball, difficult to chew and second ball is an easy one, which the President has already approved, by the time of this writing. This is also a part of carefully designed negotiation strategy. During labor disputes (strikes and lockouts), the management often face extreme demands simultaneously palced together - easy ones (soft balls) and difficult ones (hard balls) - giving a kind of psychological pressure. Imagine yourself dipping your two hands - right and left - in two buckets - one filled with cold water and other with hot water. I have never tried this but the psychologists say, “you end up with most uncomfortable situation or a torture like situation”.
During my years of studying labor-management tensions, the other distinct feature is to have or to make multiple demands in one go. I have read a union making more than one thousand demands. This is to humiliate and frustrate management. The second lot of ordinances, coming for approval, included four ordinances but it affects forty pieces of laws. Among them, one included a law showing exit door to the public officials appointed by the earlier governments.
Process vs. Outcome
Medical doctors are adept saying, “The operation (process) was perfectly successful but, unfortunately, we cannot save the patient (outcome).” What this phrase indicates that right process may lead to no or wrong outcome but it is a sheer stupidity to expect right outcome from a wrong process. Those advocating good governance, transparency and accountability must be aware of this.
Putting pressure on the President
During the height or aftermath of Gen-Z movement, in last September, Mister President issued a cryptic statement in Nepali - bado jukti lagayera (with shrewdness) and saved the Constitution. The implied meaning was saving the Constitution by dissolving the parliament and appointing Srimati Sriman Sushila Karki as the PM to head an Interim Government. This will be second time for the President to use that jukti. His heart and head is torn apart. The function of the head is to think and the function of the heart is to feel. You feel uncomfortable when your thinking (reasoning) and feeling (liking) do not match.
I suppose the lawyers who were invited to give advice on this issue did a right thing by advising the President to consult Mister Prime Minister in black shade. In the above mentioned Chicken Game, the situation (of being macho or chicken) can best be avoided by opening up communication channel between two drivers. The million dollar question will be: What will you do if the other person do not heed? Given the eccentricity of our PM, this is natural. Hopefully, with a psycho, you play a game at a meta level.
