Nepal makes way for the
comrades By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - Fridays are fateful, if not
eventful, days in Nepal. Five years ago, on June
1, 2001, a mysterious shootout took place in the
palace claiming the lives of 10 royal victims,
including King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and Crown
Prince Dipendra. The person who was the country's
prime minister at that time (coincidentally, he
holds the same position now), Girija Prasad
Koirala, later said that he gets jittery on the
eve of every Friday.
As if to prove him
prophetic, the current king, Gyanendra, has taken
a series of adventurous steps on Fridays. In 2002,
it was on Friday, October 4, when he announced the
dismissal of an elected government, sparking a
major constitutional crisis leading to political
instability and upheaval in Nepal. And almost all
subsequent measures he took
to consolidate the powers unconstitutionally
seized failed, compelling him to bow to people
power this April.
His first public
proclamation to this effect also came on a Friday
- April 21. Four days later, Gyanendra made
another proclamation leaving himself at the mercy
of a parliament he himself had revived after a gap
of four years. Very swiftly it stripped him of all
powers, perks and privileges and converted him
into a person whose property and income are
taxable. Observers had to wait until last Friday
to find out whether or not Gyanendra even retained
the status of Nepal's head of state when he was
allowed to receive credentials from newly arrived
ambassadors from Thailand and South Korea.
But last Friday's extraordinary spectacle
was witnessed elsewhere in Kathmandu - at
Baluwatar, the official residence of the prime
minister, 2 kilometers from the royal palace. And
the host of the show, considered providential by
mainstream leaders, was none other than the
octogenarian Koirala. Despite frail health, he
received the top Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal,
also known as Prachanda, and held "summit-level"
talks with him for more than an hour.
The
news that the man who has commanded the bloody
insurgency in the country for 10 years had entered
Baluwatar spread like a wildfire. Some of the
local radio stations interrupted regular programs
to churn out whatever they could gather from
reporters who had braved summer heat standing
outside the main entrance to the prime minister's
residence. They were part of a 300-strong crowd of
fellow reporters and photographers, both Nepalis
and foreigners, who remained more interested in
"Comrade Prachanda" than in the possible outcome
of parleys being held inside the residence
compound.
The reason was obvious - he was
somebody who had led a "People's War" that claimed
more than 13,000 lives and made tens of thousands
invalids, several hundred thousand displaced and a
large number of children orphaned. Destruction of
public and private property worth billions of
rupees is something that needs to be calculated
separately.
A formal meeting between
Koirala and Prachanda was not unexpected, but few
had any idea that such an event could be organized
suddenly, and without public knowledge. As it
became clear within hours, Krishna Prasad Sitaula,
the interior minister, had picked up Prachanda in
the early morning hours from the outskirts of
Pokhara, a tourist town in the west, and brought
him to the capital using a chartered helicopter.
Sitaula then escorted him from the airport to the
place where Koirala greeted him, his wife and his
comrade-in-arms, Baburam Bhattarai. It indeed was
a sensational development. (Sitaula once again
extended the same courtesy to Prachanda the
following morning by accompanying him to an
undisclosed location in the far-western hill
district of Doti.)
At the end of day, the
elusive Maoist leader finally appeared before the
media. His appearance displayed an aura of
confidence and his expressions conveyed a message
that this could be a person who believes in
action.
"He appeared like a leader with
vision, and a person who is highly unlikely to
deceive the peace-seeking people of Nepal,"
Sundarmani Dixit, a medical doctor and
civil-society activist, told a radio interviewer
after a short, separate meeting with Prachanda.
What came out at the press conference,
attended by all important personalities except
Prime Minister Koirala (for health reasons), has
now become a matter of intense political debate.
While there is unanimity of view that a joint
statement would send a strong message to the
public that the country is heading toward a
democratic process that is irreversible, murmurs
of discontent and disgruntlement over the
eight-point agreement signed by the leaders of the
Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the top rebel
leader is getting louder day by day.
A
perception is developing in the Nepalese political
landscape that SPA leaders yielded too much to the
Maoists without obtaining even an assurance that
they would renounce violence or hand in weapons
before they could be invited to join a new interim
government. The Friday agreement stipulates that
the present interim government would be replaced
by another interim setup; the parliament that was
restored at the end of April would be dissolved,
and the present constitution (promulgated in 1990
and substantially altered through parliamentary
declaration of May 18, 2006, on provisions
relating to the monarchy) be scrapped to make room
for an interim constitution to be announced in a
month.
These arrangements, argue some
dissenting leaders, make all the changes announced
after the April 24 proclamation meaningless. Their
contention is that while the Maoists' support
during the pro-democracy movement this year was
crucial, they should not have been allowed to
dictate the terms. Does one Maoist party carry
weight equal to the weight of seven other parties
combined?
In reciprocation, the Maoists
have consented to dismantle what they have been
calling "people's governments" at all levels -
central, district and village. The other Maoist
concession is for placing their weapons and
fighters under United Nations supervision. But
these are not substantial gestures. Local Maoist
governments are very much similar to local units
of other political parties. And the issue of UN
supervision of weapons and fighters is irrelevant,
if not outright objectionable.
"How
convincing is the contention of assigning the
legal status the state army enjoys to a band of
fighters who were terrorists until cases against
them were withdrawn recently?" asked Govinda Raj
Joshi, a central committee member of the Nepali
Congress, the political party headed by Prime
Minister Koirala, when approached for his
reaction. Joshi was once minister of home affairs.
Joshi is one of those politicians who tend
to think that the entry of Prachanda and his
comrades into state power through the upcoming
interim government amounts in essence to a Maoist
takeover of Nepal. Western diplomats also see
these prospects as worrying. Neighbors and Nepal's
influential friends abroad do not see any sense in
dissolving the existing parliament without a
ready-made substitute for it. That Maoists openly
espouse a republican agenda has also become a
matter of concern to those who are in favor of
retaining monarchy in a "ceremonial form". Then
there is the Nepali intelligentsia, which refuses
to accept a Maoist dictatorship in the place of an
autocratic monarchy.
To the Maoist
leadership, this is an alarmist view. And
Prachanda used his maiden press conference to
assure the public that he and members of the party
he heads, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist),
have come out in the open for good. They do not
intend to return to the jungle. They have begun
opening offices in different districts and areas
across the country, with women's and students'
wings providing an additional support base to the
party, which plans to run a campaign aggressively
ahead of the polls for a Constituent Assembly
(CA). That the CA is needed to draw a new
constitution for Nepal has already been agreed
upon. Once the new constitution, to be written and
issued by the people's representatives, is ready
the country is to hold new parliamentary
elections.
In an interview with Asia Times
Online, Dev Gurung, a senior central committee
member of the CPN (Maoist), contended that the
Maoists' decision to join competitive politics in
a peaceful manner is genuine and irrevocable. When
asked about the basis to believe that the current
round of negotiations with the government would
not fail like two previous rounds (in 2001 and
2003), Gurung, who is one of three members of the
Maoist team holding talks with the government team
led by Sitaula, offered this explanation: "There
were royal governments in the past, and their
representatives always rejected our proposition
for a Constituent Assembly. The atmosphere has
undergone a sea change now, with the SPA agreeing
to elections for a Constituent Assembly. In fact,
there is no competition between us and SPA now, as
both sides are working to make the current
transition phase as smooth as possible.
Competition and rivalry may come once the country
gets a new constitution and a new parliament.
"We are committed to retain and respect
full democratic rights," Gurung said.
According to Gurung, his party would
tolerate public criticism, including those made
against the party supremo, Prachanda. In reply to
a question about an incident in which the head of
an association of Maoist victims was shot dead in
cold blood when he led a demonstration that burned
an effigy of Prachanda, Gurung expressed regrets
over such incidents and also for the death of
innocent civilians, and said incidents that
happened during the insurgency would not be
repeated.
What do the Maoists want in the
new political configuration? According to Gurung,
his party's objective is to make Nepal a
democratic country with a civilized society. It
should have room for all of Nepal's ethnic and
regional groups, developing a federal structure if
necessary.
All the things that make Nepal
a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country should be
done away with. The institution of monarchy and
the unequal treaty of 1950 between India and Nepal
are examples of such a legacy. In addition to
this, the 1,800km border between Nepal and India
should not be left "open" (unregulated) forever.
Maoists are critical of those democracies,
particularly the United States and India, that did
not extend their support to Nepal's pro-democratic
movement. Gurung expressed surprise about the
pro-king policy followed by them in the initial
phase. And he singled out US Ambassador James
Moriarty for his meddlesome role. India's policy
remained ambivalent up to a point, as some of the
politicians in New Delhi found the status quo
expedient compared with a setup formed and owned
by the people of Nepal. China, he said, at least
remained neutral. The Chinese media refrain from
using the word "Maoist"; they usually allude to
"anti-government guerrillas".
If elected
to power, according to Gurung, his party would
adopt an economic policy that could transform the
present subsistence-level agricultural economy
into an industrial one. Nepal must not be allowed
to remain a captive market for Indian products.
Gurung said there was absolutely no truth to the
rumor that his party's policy is to end private
ownership of land and other properties. What the
party seeks, he clarified, is to remove grounds
for the exploitation of poor and marginalized
communities by affluent and influential groups.
Outwardly, despite differences in their
approach to some of the issues at hand, Maoists
and SPA partners are committed to work for
democracy and the democratic process. But elements
of mutual suspicion lurk just beneath the surface.
At the press conference on Friday, the Maoist
supremo said he was not out of woods yet, as far
as conspiracies are concerned. He criticized the
Nepalese army, which remained loyal to the king
with a "royal" tag attached to its name until
recently; he also cited a road accident resulting
in the death of a charismatic communist leader,
Madan Bhandari, 13 years ago.
Bhandari, a
firebrand nationalist, was general secretary of a
mainline but moderate communist party, and he and
his traveling colleague died when their jeep
skidded down a mountainous highway and plunged
into the Narayani River in the central hills. At
first, it was accepted as a road accident, but the
incident later attracted a conspiratorial
dimension. The jeep driver, who survived the
accident, was shot dead in broad daylight in a
Kathmandu suburb by unidentified gunmen. The case
remains unsolved.
Political parties
associated with the SPA too have their doubts
about Maoists and their maneuvers. From the SPA's
standpoint, the Maoists still are not a
trustworthy, responsible political party. Their
whole exercise could be a window-dressing, in
essence a move to buy time to regroup so that they
could launch another phase of guerrilla warfare to
accomplish their goal of one-party rule in Nepal.
Their cadres, particularly in the
countryside, have not stopped killings, abductions
and extortions. Nobody knows for sure whether they
have indeed closed their training camps and
shelters in far-flung, isolated districts. They
have not made any pledge to respond to public
complaints about hundreds of people who have
disappeared in Maoist camps. What about the state
of relationship Prachanda conceded Maoists had
with the palace? The press conference was told
that all channels of contacts and communications
were severed after Gyanendra imposed direct rule
on Nepal on February 1, 2005. But can his words be
taken at their face value? Doubts persist, at
least among political analysts. Kathmandu is
in a state of flux, and New Delhi and Washington
are watchful. A Maoist takeover of Nepal, a buffer
zone between two Asian giants, could be
destabilizing for the whole of South Asia. In
spite of their growing contacts and the resultant
thaw with China and Pakistan, Indians are quite
unlikely to see Nepali Maoists in power as anyone
other than China's friendly forces at their
doorstep. Conversely, China would be highly
sensitive to prospects of an Indian military
presence in Nepal, which shares borders with
Tibet. Chinese reactions to activities associated
with "Free Tibet" campaigns, inspired and often
funded by Western powers, have always been strong.
A Chinese response to extreme situations remains
unpredictable.
What is the way out, then?
A viable course is to let Nepal grow as a
democratic country with a vibrant civil society.
No country with a competitive political process
and with a government adopting policies and
programs that are transparent can be a security
threat to its neighbors or world peace.
If
left-wing parties in India can take part in
competitive politics, take power in some states
and be an influential factor in the national
parliament in New Delhi, why can't their Nepalese
counterparts be encouraged to synchronize their
activities to emerging trends and aspirations?
Nepal's chances of coming out of present
phase uncertainty largely depend on the help it
receives from its immediate neighbors and friends.
And this help has to be in the form of helping
Nepalis to help themselves.
"Keeping in
view ... experiences with Sri Lanka and
Bangladesh, it is better that we keep away from
the internal affairs of that country," said S
Sudhakar Reddy, a member of the Indian parliament,
after a visit to Nepal last month.
Hindu
nationalists in secular India, too, need to
realize that while Nepalis might remain keen to
retain the character of a religion followed by the
majority, they definitely are not in favor of
giving Nepal the look of a theocratic state. The
king of Nepal, even if he survives the ongoing
whirlwind, cannot be a pope for Hindus.
Dhruba Adhikary, who has been a
Dag Hammarskjold fellow, currently heads the Nepal
Press Institute.
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