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2 Maoists push for action on the
king By Dhruba Adhikary
KATHMANDU - The agreed deadline of June 14
for conducting polls to elect an assembly to write
a permanent constitution for Nepal will be missed,
placing the country under dark clouds of
uncertainty.
Leaders of seven political
parties and their new partner, the Maoist party,
initially tried to pin the blame for this on the
Election Commission. But since the commissioners
said the absence of
election laws was the main
hindrance, politicians in the interim Parliament,
as well as in the interim government, have begun
trading charges against one another for the delay,
which is pushing the country toward a new phase of
chaos and instability.
Earlier, in an
upbeat mood, political players associated with the
alliance of eight parties had inserted the June 14
election deadline in the interim charter when it
was promulgated on January 15. Once it was
realized that the June polls were not feasible,
the government worked out a formula to amend the
charter with a new poll date, preferably in
November.
But immediate bids to get it
approved by the interim Parliament faced a
different kind of hurdle - in the form of protests
in front of the Speaker's chair, literally
preventing him from conducting the business of the
House. One of the two groups involved in
sloganeering belonged to the Maoists' party; the
other was made up of members hailing from the
southern plains, called Terai. Both groups are
represented in the interim administration. And
this is the irony - they chose to behave as if
they were in the opposition.
Prime
Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, who heads the
interim government, has been in favor of fixing a
new election date and completing the
democratization process on the basis of a roadmap
already agreed upon. Accordingly, the fate of the
monarchy is to be formally sealed by the first
meeting of the constituent assembly. Parties that
tilt to the right see this argument as plausible,
noting that Koirala is head of country's largest
and oldest political party, the Nepali Congress.
Although the Congress has centrist
credentials, Koirala's occasional statements
allude to a "ceremonial monarchy", making ordinary
people apprehensive about his true intentions. A
prevalent suspicion is that Koirala is trying to
reverse the democratic gears on the prompting of
his "friends" in New Delhi.
India shares
Washington's perception that Nepal's democratic
forces need to obtain support from the
pro-monarchy elements or they can't successfully
fight with a communist front that is to be
dominated by Maoists, now formally known as the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). Besides,
Koirala would not like people to give credit to
Maoists for making Nepal a republic. After all, he
was the one who led the people's movement against
the king last year.
The Maoist leadership,
on the other hand, feels that since the feudal
remnants surrounding King Gyanendra and invisible
foreign hands (read India and the US) continue to
remain active, the grand alliance of eight parties
must not lose time and should declare the country
a republic from the interim Parliament. The
assembly to be elected could then endorse it
later.
Top Maoist leaders, including
Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) and Baburam
Bhattarai, have been using media platforms to
advocate that setting up the institutions of a
republic must begin from the interim Parliament,
well ahead of June 14 deadline. Maoists have said
that otherwise they would simultaneously "explode"
from government, Parliament, street and
cantonments where their combatants have been
sheltered since the conclusion of peace accords
last year.
The Maoist leadership has
brushed aside doubts on the authority of an
interim Parliament to take such a drastic measure,
saying that a Parliament formed by popular mandate
expressed through nationwide agitation is fully
competent to make relevant decisions. Bhattarai
once went to the extent of saying that the interim
Parliament could even declare a man a woman.
If it did not have the required authority,
how could it scrap the 1990 constitution and take
a series of measures to sideline Gyanendra
together with his dictatorial agenda, the Maoists
wondered. Speaker Subhas Nembang too lent support
to Maoists, saying that the declaration of a
republic could be made in one minute if all eight
parties made a unanimous decision with that
objective.
The basis of previous accords
and pacts have become irrelevant, making it
necessary to create a new basis for the alliance,
Bhattarai told a television interviewer on
Saturday.
While other political parties
are using their free time to review past deeds and
future courses of action, the Maoist leaders have
initiated moves to show that they are ahead of
others when the question of patriotism surfaces.
Departing from their policy of not
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