Nepal’s politics is back at square one after King Gyanendra’s failure to negotiate peace with Maoist rebels and hold elections through “constructive monarchy.” The royal experiment provoked a massive urban anti-monarchy movement led by an alliance of five parties, while the rural-based Maoist rebellion continued to grow apace.
The king took charge of the government by sacking Sher Bahadur Deuba as prime minister on Oct. 4, 2002, calling him incompetent to hold parliamentary elections within six months as required by the constitution.
After 20 months of unsuccessful experiments with two hand-picked prime ministers — Lokendra Bahadur Chand and Surya Bahadur Thapa — Gyanendra reappointed Mr. Deuba as prime minister on June 2, apparently seeking to cool off street protests and avert a graver political crisis.
Mr. Deuba heads a breakaway faction of Nepal’s oldest party, the Nepali Congress (NC), which carries the same name plus Democratic in parenthesis.
The NC (Democratic) party had sought the reinstatement of Mr. Deuba’s government, while the five-party alliance agitated against the king’s intervention and demanded restoration of the dissolved house of representatives and formation of an all-party government.
Many analysts agree Gyanendra was running out of options in May amid the urban protests and the Maoist war in the countryside. Early that month, he told Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa to resign, and asked the political parties to recommend a person with “a clean image” who could form a coalition government and hold parliamentary elections in April next year.
For three weeks, the five parties, particularly the Nepali Congress (NC) and Unified Marxist and Leninist (UML), jockeyed for the position of prime minister and failed to come up with a consensus candidate. So the king picked Mr. Deuba on June 2 and instructed him to form a coalition government, establish peace and organize parliamentary elections for April 2005.
Mr. Deuba’s reappointment as prime minister underlined the king’s predicament, and critics questioned Gyanendra’s own competence in bringing back the person he fired as “incompetent” 20 months earlier.
Analysts, however, say the king gained some breathing space in the short term by the reappointment. First, the monarch avoided having to reinstate the dissolved parliament, which would have restrained his own activism. Second, the street protests died down following the withdrawal of the UML party from the five-party alliance. Third, the political parties lost their former unity, reducing their ability to cause trouble for the monarchy.
In the emerging equation of urban-based Nepali politics, there are four parties — the NC (Democratic), the UML, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), and the Nepal Sadvavana Party (NSP-Mandal faction) — supporting Mr. Deuba, and an equal number of parties — the NC, Samyukta Jana Morcha (SJM), Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (NWPP), and Nepal Sadvavana Party (NSP-Aanandi Devi faction) opposing him.
The four-party coalition led by Mr. Deuba has signed a 43-point Common Minimum Point (CMP) document as the basis of the political contract of the coalition government. Highlights of the CMP include a seven-point agenda to consolidate national interests and democracy, maximum flexibility in resolving Maoist insurgency through national consensus, maintenance of law and order to guarantee peace and security, seven measures to provide immediate relief to victims of insurgency, six measures to improve political institutions, a six-point economic agenda to uplift the country’s economy, and 15-point social agenda to uplift poor and downtrodden communities.
Mr. Deuba, after more than a month of dickering over ministerial berths with his coalition partners — the UML, RPP, and NSP (Mandal faction) — expanded his three-member Cabinet to 31 members on Monday with 12 members from his own party NC (D), 11 from the UML, five from the RPP, one from NSP (Mandal faction), and two from the Civic Society, who are, in fact, royal nominees.
Analysts say there is so many disagreements among the four coalition partners over what should be a smooth political road map for Nepal’s peace and development that they are certain to be fighting among themselves.
In Nepal’s political spectrum, Mr. Deuba’s NC (D) is right of center, the UML is left of center, the RPP represents right-wing monarchists, and the NSP (Mandal faction) is the ethnic-sectarian right wing.
The four-party alliance opposing the coalition government, led by NC leader Girija Prasad Koirala — comprising Samyukta Jana Morcha (SJM), the Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (NWPP), and the Nepal Sadvavana Party (NSP-Aanandi Devi faction) — sees the present government as a continuation of “regression” and has already announced that it will continue its protests. The alliance has declared a 45-day hunger strike, to be carried out by relays of hunger strikers nationwide, as a continuation of its anti-regression protests.
Although all parties realize that the Maoist insurgency is a major issue that needs to be dealt with for the sake of peace, stability, and Nepal’s development, none of the parties in the monarchist camp has been able to come up with a consensus on dealing with the Maoists.
The 43-point CMP, moreover, is vague about how to find a solution to the Maoist insurgency, although it calls for new talks with the rebels to end the eight-year civil war, which has claimed nearly 11,000 lives.
The CMP states: “The parties resolve that the government will pursue serious negotiations with the Maoists and show maximum flexibility.”
But Mr. Deuba told a BBC Nepali-language program on June 30 there can be no compromise on the issues of constitutional monarchy and multiparty democracy in any future talks with the rebels. This protective attitude toward the monarchy was responsible for the failure of talks between the royal regime and the Maoists in November 2001 and August 2003.
So analysts question whether there can be a negotiated settlement with the Maoists, who since the autumn of 2001 have urged a three-point solution:
• A round-table conference of all political forces.
• Formation of an interim government.
• The election of a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that will define which of the contending political forces in Nepal will get what, when and how.
The three royal regimes since then, however, have neither agreed to these demands nor presented an acceptable alternative to the Maoists’ solution. As a result, two cease-fires and subsequent negotiations have collapsed, leading to renewed warfare between the Royal Nepali Army (RNA) and the People’s Liberation Army, Nepal (PLAN).
The Maoists have refused to a third cease-fire and negotiations with Mr. Deuba under the present circumstances, dismissing him as a puppet of the king.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, chairman of the rebel Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), who also goes by the name Prachanda, on Monday again expressed his party’s willingness for peace talks with the government, but only under the mediation of the United Nations.
While civil society supports inviting the United Nations for conflict resolution, the royal regime is reluctant to accept U.N. involvement, as neither India nor the United States wants that. The United States and India have in the past issued statements that the Maoist problem should be solved internally, and the royal regime, which survives on military assistance from Washington, London and New Delhi, still appears to believe it can win the war with foreign arms.
The royal regime has survived on the strength of more than $100 million in military aid it has received from the United States, India and Britain over the past two years to combat the Maoist insurgency.
India appears determined to prevent a Maoist takeover of Nepal because New Delhi is concerned about a spillover effect into India’s own Naxalite insurgency, which is becoming increasingly powerful in nine of India’s 25 states. But though a desperate portion of Nepal’s Katmandu-based elite appears to hope for New Delhi’s military intervention, Indian diplomats discount such a possibility, remembering India’s military fiasco in Sri Lanka in the 1980s when it sought to disarm the Tamil Tiger guerrillas.
New Delhi’s anti-Maoist move includes tightening the border, arresting the guerrillas crossing the border and handing them over to the royal authorities, and activating New Delhi’s political assets in Katmandu as mediators to unite monarchists and party leaders. It also involves providing more than $65 million worth of military hardware, including helicopter gunships and training to RNA soldiers in mountain warfare.
The U.S. military assistance to the royal regime is less than India’s, yet the aid carries more political weight. Washington has provided $20 million worth of military hardware, M-16 rifles, and advisers on counterinsurgency since 2002.
Prachanda has made it clear that although his party’s ultimate aim is to establish a Maoist People’s Republic, he is prepared to settle the issue through a round-table conference among all political forces, formation of an interim government and election for a constituent assembly. He is confident that Maoists can give a coup de grace to monarchy through a democratically elected constituent assembly and establish a democratic republic. Maintaining that his party will accept nothing less than election to the constituent assembly, Prachanda also has asked his cadres and militia to face the situation of further violence if the government continues to ignore his party’s proposals.
The Maoist demand for a constituent assembly, a politically unacceptable idea among the monarchists and parliamentary parties until a few months ago, has now become an item of national debate. All major parties including the NC, the UML and the RPP have clearly shown their inclination toward election to the constituent assembly.
In view of the tilt of political parties and civic leaders toward an election to a constituent assembly, it appears that Maoists have already won the political war as they have successfully sold their political agenda, but they are still locked in military stalemate with the RNA.
Analysts are of the opinion that even if the government agrees to the constituent assembly, the armed forces of both sides need to be neutralized for a free and fair election. This is where the role of the United Nations is vital, analysts say.
The situation of a military stalemate, while bolstering hopes for a peaceful settlement, has become painful for ordinary people as they have become victims of crossfire as well as arbitrary arrests and torture. RNA’s record of human rights violations surpasses that of the Maoists, as Amnesty International reports that more than half of the estimated 8,000 killings by the government forces are civilians.
The worst violence has yet to touch the larger towns and cities but reports of skirmishes around highways, previously believed to be under government control, have become frequent. Reports of disappearance, torture and extra-judicial killings by the RNA and kidnappings by the Maoist militia have alarmed human rights groups both inside and outside the country.
Observers say the RNA’s activism is going beyond acceptable limits as it is increasingly acting as a royal militia bent on protecting the interests of monarchists and it has gone beyond civilian control. Recently, it refused to abide by the order of the Supreme Court to submit the verdict of the military tribunal to the highest judicial authority of Nepal, arguing that military is not compelled under any law or constitution to furnish information to the Supreme Court.
While Mr. Deuba’s government is yet to take the initiative for a cease-fire and peace talks with the Maoists, Nepal watchers see no immediate hope for peace on the horizon as political forces suffer from a crisis of confidence and the army is beyond civilian control. As a result, Mr. Deuba’s talk of creating “national consensus” to discuss and negotiate with the Maoists appears to be far from likely to happen.
• Chitra Tiwari, formerly a lecturer of political science at Nepal’s Tribhuvan University, is a Washington-based free-lance analyst of international affairs specializing in South Asia. He can be reached by e-mail at cktiwari@verizon.net.
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