Politicians race to unite Nepal

KATMANDU, Nepal

After years of civil war and upheaval, Nepal’s fate now rests with a bickering group of politicians who have less than four months to remake the government, write a new constitution and integrate thousands of former Maoist insurgents into the army they battled for a decade.

No one knows for sure what will happen if they fail.

“There will be a vacuum, and a danger of relapsing into the old days of conflict,” said Baburam Bhattarai, a top Maoist leader. “Time is running out very fast.”

The interim constitution must be replaced by May 28 and extending that deadline requires the support of the opposition Maoists.

The difficulties stem partly from the Herculean tasks facing the fractious nation.

It is trying to turn itself into a republic after centuries of royal rule; it is reorganizing the very structure of the country, creating new states to empower marginalized ethnic groups; it is hoping to secure peace by bringing the Maoists into politics and integrating them into the military.

“It’s a very complicated moment in Nepal,” said Sarah Levit-Shore, who has been running the Atlanta-based Carter Center’s mission in the country for the past three years. “But it usually is.”

The king of this poor mountain nation was gunned down in 2001 in a royal massacre that is still the subject of lurid speculation. His successor briefly seized absolute power before he was overthrown and the monarchy abolished. All the while, a Maoist rebellion raged, eventually killing 13,000 people before a peace agreement was signed in 2006 and an interim constitution adopted.

In 2008 elections, the Maoists won 40 percent of the seats in the constitutional assembly, formed a government and then resigned last May in a power struggle with the largely ceremonial president. After smaller parties banded together to form a new government, the enraged Maoists repeatedly shut down the capital city with protests, blocked the roads where fuel is imported from India and paralyzed parliament.

Now the rival parties have to figure out a way to work together to merge the former insurgents into the security forces before a U.N. monitoring mission leaves on May 15 and to pass a new constitution before the interim document expires later that month.

“The main problem is they are thinking about power, not constitution-writing and the peace process,” said human rights activist Krishan Pahadi.

But the political battle is only a small part of the turmoil that has become routine for the Nepalese.

A severe energy shortage leaves Katmandu without power for half the day. Water is even scarcer, and the economy is a shambles.

Protests are constant. One recent day, students marched through the capital to demand protection from Maoist toughs; hours later, civic groups held a sit-in demanding an end to the political impasse. The day before, hundreds of protesters demanding rights for lower castes marched past piles of rotting trash, remnants of a two-week-old garbage collectors’ strike.

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