KATHMANDU - The electoral mandate obtained
through the April 10 poll has made the party of
Nepal's former Maoist rebels the largest single
group in the Constituent Assembly, but the chances
of their leader, Prachanda (the fierce one),
forming Nepal's first Maoist-led government are
directly linked to his ability to persuade
established rivals to join the
coalition-in-the-making.
However, it may
not be too difficult for the man who earlier
launched a political movement and subsequently
commanded an armed group to support that rebellion
for a decade (1996-2006). And his party spokesman
publicly issued a threat last Thursday that the
Maoists would form a minority government on their
own if
other
political parties hesitated in forming a consensus
coalition.
Prachanda, whose registered
name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, is currently the
chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
as well as the supreme commander of the
20,000-strong People's Liberation Army (PLA).
Members of the PLA have been living in United
Nations-supervised cantonments scattered in
various locations. Their weapons are stored in
designated containers. The Maoist party also has a
youth wing, the Young Communist League (YCL),
whose "trained" members have become a source of
terror across the country.
A post-poll
media report from Paanchthar, an eastern hill
district, for example, said YCL cadres severed the
water pipeline on which an entire village was
dependent. The punitive measure was taken
apparently as revenge on villagers who were
presumed to have voted for political parties which
were the Maoists' rivals. To make matters worse,
YCL chief Ganeshman Pun told a May Day rally in
the capital that the YCL would not be dissolved
until the goal of communism was achieved.
While the much-awaited national poll
offered him a political mandate, Prachanda now
needs to specifically address questions related to
the PLA and the YCL. How can he head an elected
civilian government, simultaneously keeping his
rebel force intact? Don't the Maoist leaders need
to allay public apprehensions about the YCL before
they embark on the mission of setting up yet
another transitional government? The April 10 poll
was primarily held to elect an assembly that will
write and approve a new constitution on the
republican model by the end of 2010.
The
PLA and its possible integration into the Nepal
army has been a thorny issue for some time.
Although the army leadership has repeatedly made
public its intention to obey the orders of a
legitimate elected government, the idea of
integrating a politically-indoctrinated force is
being fiercely resisted. It is simply unimaginable
for the army as an institution to agree to be
overwhelmed by the same rebel force it defeated in
the field, compelling the rebels to withdraw their
insurgency and take a political course which led
them to subsequently join a political group
opposed to the absolute rule of King Gyanendra
(now suspended). The April uprising of 2006 forced
the monarch to bow to public pressure in a short
span of 19 days, mainly because the army top brass
declined to support any repressive policy which
would have entailed further bloodshed.
Caretaker Prime Minister Girija Prasad
Koirala, who is also defense minister, is aware of
this state of mind in the army. He has a dilemma.
He can't antagonize the Maoists; nor can he ignore
the voice of the army, which could put up serious
obstacles to the ongoing peace process.
Among the alternatives suggested to him is
to create an industrial security force and absorb
the PLA soldiers in that force. Since the peace
accords concluded in the preceding months do not
specifically mention "integration with the Nepal
army", goes the contention, the Maoist leaders
should be satisfied with this kind of arrangement.
Security analysts also point to
contradictions contained in the Maoist stand on
integration: how can you justify adding 20,000 men
and women to the Nepal army when your basic policy
is to make it smaller, on the grounds that Nepal
does not need to fight with China or India? In a
newspaper interview printed last Tuesday,
Prachanda floated a plan to have a national army
of about 50,000 soldiers - almost half the size of
the current strength.
Meanwhile, the
Election Commission is preparing to release later
this week the final tally of results, with names
of all 575 candidates elected to sit in the
601-member Constituent Assembly. The remaining 26
people are to be nominated by the government. The
Maoists have 220 seats while their nearest rivals,
the Nepali Congress, headed by Koirala, have
secured 110.
The party of moderate
communists, Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) is in
third position with 103 seats in the House, where
25 parties are to be represented. Whether or not
this jumbo body will ultimately be able to write a
good statute for Nepal remains a matter of
conjecture.
The immediate task at hand is
to cobble leading parties together to form a
credible government.
And the job of taking
initiatives is for Prachanda, whose declared
ambition is to be the first president of the
republic of Nepal once it becomes a reality. The
incumbent interim constitution stipulates that the
first meeting of the assembly will "implement" the
decision of the outgoing interim legislature to
make the country a "federal democratic republic".
The first meeting has to be convened
within 21 days of the announcement of the final
election results. Once this happens, Gyanendra
will be told to vacate Narayanhity Palace, which
he inherited as a Shaha king. An 18th-century king
from the Shaha dynasty of the Gorkha principality,
Prithvi Narayan Shaha, conquered small states and
created a country called Nepal, in 1769 - eight
years before the birth of the United States of
America.
The man of the
moment Prachanda's challenge is to
provide a vision - to be shared by all Nepalis and
not just Maoist cadres - and the leadership skills
to carry the country forward. His public
performances since he left his hideout nearly two
years ago do provide a basis to expect that this
man, born into a lower middle-class family
belonging to socially high-caste Brahmin community
in a village in the western hills district, can
display the charismatic leadership needed for the
new Nepal he advocates.
At 54, Prachanda
has a strong physique. The revolutionary
politician with a broad forehead and moustache is
keenly watched and listened to whenever he appears
for a television debate. If some of his public
speeches are any indication, he is a firebrand
nationalist. It is in this context that his
attempts to woo patriotic Nepalis, even if they
were close to the king in the past, need to be
brought into public scrutiny. He is a university
graduate in agricultural sciences. In private
conversations, he can instantly become an affable
friend.
At press conferences, he takes
questions seriously and offers responses in a
language understood even by uneducated people. As
the head of an extended family with four grown-up
children, Prachanda's appearance generates a
spontaneous sense of confidence and
responsibility. Prachanda becomes visibly
emotional when he tells his audience how
devastated he was when he learnt of an incident in
which Maoist cadres planted a bomb in a public
bus, killing dozens of innocent men, women and
children. He says he has not personally killed
anyone, although most of the 13,000 people killed
during the insurgency were victims of the armed
rebellion he commanded.
As the dictum
goes, all that glistens may not be gold. A big
mark of vermilion powder on his forehead, for
instance, does not make him a devout Hindu. In
fact, he is least bothered about religion in what
is still Hindu-majority Nepal. The man behind the
appearance has a blood-stained hand. "They
[Maoists] do have a violent background," said
Daman Dhungana, a respected civil society activist
who is trying to help the Maoists enhance their
acceptability.
Although voters have
brought the Maoists to center stage, it is for
themselves to earn confidence and respectability,
both at the domestic level and on the external
front. That precisely was the message US
ambassador Nancy Powell conveyed to the Maoist
leader when she took the unprecedented step of
meeting Prachanda, a person whose organization is
still on the official US list of terrorist
outfits.
"She encouraged Dahal [Prachanda]
to ensure that all Maoist organizations illustrate
their commitment to the political process through
their words and actions," said an embassy
statement on Friday, alluding to the meeting that
took place a day earlier.
Prachanda,
though, has a big job in removing a host of
lurking doubts from the public mind.
Despite his frankness and spontaneity,
Prachanda and his ideology still remain an enigma.
He and his comrades project themselves as radical
communists, often ridiculing the UML and other
moderate groups, but the Maoist chairman loses no
time in telling the business community that they
(Maoists) accept capitalism as a road to
communism.
Another intriguing issue
revolves around the Maoist scheme to divide the
country into federal units on the basis of
ethnicity. Whether such a proposition is feasible
in a country known for its mixed ethnic
communities has already become of matter of
widespread concern. If their plan in its present
form were to be implemented, it would be a
prescription for the disintegration of the
country. Likewise, the Maoist leaders denounce the
feudalism of 240 years of monarchy, but do not
offer any explanation of why the country is being
pushed back into an era when the region was
fragmented into smaller principalities, each of
which used to be ruled by a king.
Similarly, the central plank of the Maoist
agenda used to be nationalistic standpoints, often
denouncing Indian hegemony. But Prachanda's recent
utterances make it clear his party has compromised
on issues to be taken up with Nepal's southern
neighbor. Abrogation of unequal treaties, border
encroachment, agreements on river water,
regulating an unregulated (porous) land border
were some of the significant issues the Maoists
intended to raise once they assumed power. But, to
some surprise and public disappointment, the
Maoists have been abandoning these pressing issues
with India one by one. "Without taking cooperation
with India forward, we cannot do anything for
Nepal," The Hindu newspaper in India quoted him as
saying in an interview published on April 28.
Clearly, Prachanda has already learned the
art of compromise as a means of maintaining power.
In a revealing interview published in a
Nepali-language newspaper on January 13, Prachanda
offers answers to a volley of questions revolving
around his life and thoughts. Lenin is his role
model. This is Vladimir Ulyanov, who adopted the
pseudonym Lenin in 1901, who masterminded the
Bolshevik takeover of power in Russia in 1917 and
became the first head of the Soviet Union. The
state he helped to found collapsed and
disintegrated after 70 years. He is also known for
his ruthlessness.
Prachanda's proposition
to extend the right of self-determination to new
provincial units is considered dangerous for the
unity and integrity of Nepal, which is sandwiched
between India and China. "The [Soviet] communist
dictatorship could not hold Yugoslavia together,"
said seasoned politician Bishwabandhu Thapa in a
comment printed last Tuesday.
Prachanda
and his comrades also send conflicting signals
within the country and beyond. On the one hand,
they draw satisfaction from their success in
bringing the peace process to the point it has
reached now. On the other hand, Prachanda
continues to use inflammatory language to say that
violence is still an option for the Maoists.
"Right now, I cannot renounce any kind of
violence," was how Prachanda responded to a media
question on April 24. This statement was made
immediately after senior Maoist leaders held
consultations with Kathmandu-based ambassadors,
representatives of donor agencies and United
Nations staff.
This climate of uncertainty
makes it difficult to say whether or not the
Maoists' rise to the present status is good for
Nepal. From a neighbor's perspective, ie from New
Delhi, analysts are expressing ambivalent views.
In the opinion of P K Hormis Tharakan, a former
chief of India's external intelligence agency, the
Research and Analysis Wing, the gains the Maoists
have made in Nepal will have a positive
"demonstration effect on the Maoists in India", as
it will encourage them to accomplish victory
through the electoral process.
Another
view is that the Maoists are a threat to both
Nepal and India, as put forward by B Raman, also a
respected Indian analyst. His recent writeup lists
a series of "valid reasons for a military takeover
in Nepal". He thinks the Maoists' bid to seize
power should be thwarted jointly by democratic
forces and the military leadership. He advises the
Indian leadership to close its eyes to any
military takeover in Nepal, as has been the case
with Myanmar and Bangladesh.
The only
person who can preempt a military takeover is
Prachanda, and he can only do this by removing all
doubts about the Maoists' sincerity and honesty in
abiding by the rules and norms of democracy.
Failing this, his plans to lay the foundations for
a new Nepal will be shattered.
Dhruba Adhikary
is a Kathmandu-based journalist.
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