Nepal’s electorate delivered a humiliating defeat to the Maoists – United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M). Dashing the hopes of Prachanda and Bhattarai, the voters rewarded them with just 80 of the 601 seats. What a great fall it is? In the first election held in 2008, the Maoists emerged as the single largest party in the interim parliament with 208 seats.
Frankly, the results in the Nov 19 ballot, which were announced on Dec 3, have not come as a surprise. The Maoists with their publicly aired bickering, and well documented splits scripted their downfall, and boosted the acceptance index for old guard, Nepali Congress (NC) and the not so old the Stalinist Communist Party of Nepal–United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML). Both these parties won the lion’s share of the seats.
NC has won 196 seats; close behind is CPN-UML with 175 seats. Congress has called for talks with other parties to form a new government.
The Constituent Assembly not only functions as a parliament, but is also tasked with writing a new constitution within a year.
The election followed five years of political turmoil, with six different governments, during which the constituent assembly failed to agree on a new statue despite repeated deadline extensions.
The Assembly was dissolved last year by Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, who declared himself head of a caretaker government. He
was replaced by chief justice, Khil Raj Regmi, in March this year with a mandate to hold the election. He was helped in the task by a committee of major parties.
Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dhal, also known as Prachanda, blamed the Maoist defeat on “irregularities in the election” and “a conspiracy” against the party by foreign powers, without elaborating further. He declared that his party will not participate in the Constituent Assembly unless an independent probe into election rigging is established.
But senior leaders like Narayan Kaji Shrestha said that the party will “accept the people’s mandate” and will be “part of the [constitutional] process.”
China, which had no compunction about providing arms for the Nepali army as it marched to suppress the Maoist insurgency, sought to boost its influence under the Maoist governments. Over the past few years, Beijing has funded major infrastructure projects in Nepal.
In 2006, the Maoist party abandoned a decade-long guerilla struggle and struck an agreement with a seven-party coalition, headed by Nepal Congress. Brokered by India, the deal was known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. The UCPN-M feared it would be targeted by the US Bush administration, which had branded it a terrorist organisation.”
The “peace” deal was aimed at ending the Maoist insurgency and heading off a popular uprising against King Gyanendra. Backed by the army, he had dismissed parliament and was ruling as an absolute monarch.
Nepal Congress and its allies were forced to turn to the Maoists.
The UCPN-M insisted on the abolition of the monarchy and won the 2008 election by promising to carry out land reforms and address a long list of social grievances.
Prachanda headed the first government, but that collapsed after the army refused point blank to integrate former Maoist guerrillas into its ranks, as outlined in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.
As part of the “peace” deal, former Maoist guerrillas surrendered their weapons and were confined to encampments. Out of 19,000 former fighters, only 3,000 were finally recruited to the Nepali army under the stringent conditions set by the top army officers. The rest were cut adrift with minimal compensation, generating broad opposition in the UCPN-M’s ranks that led to a split last year. The breakaway faction boycotted the election.
Maoists, in office first under Prachanda, then under Baburam Bhattarai, did not endear themselves with the people by their policies and programmes. They shelved land reforms they had promised the rural poor, for instance.
Nepal is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 157 out of 187 countries. More than 30 percent of people live on less than $US14 per month while the overall poverty rate remains at 25 percent. For the country’s mid-western and far western regions, this figure is 45 and 46 percent respectively.
Some 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas and depends on subsistence farming. Each day, about 1,600 people migrate to look for jobs mostly in India -an indication of growing poverty and unemployment.
The new Nepal government has a clear cut task- turnaround in the living conditions without fuelling any more political upheavals.
–POREG DESK
