Analyses
Nepal: Maoists Win Ballot Battle
By Sudeshna Sarkar, ISN Security Watch 30/04/08
May 1, 2008 - 2:02:44 PM

Flanked by bodyguards and pursued by photographers, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) enter a building in the capital Kathmandu where they have been planning their next move. It's a far cry from their recent past, when for more than a decade they had been meeting in secret, evading capture as a banned terrorist organization.

Now the rebels have a new, above-ground cause. Elections held on 10 April saw them win 220 seats in the 601-member Constituent Assembly, making them the largest party in the country.

The outcome of these most critical of elections, held after two postponements last year, was indeed surprising. None had anticipated such a hearty Maoist victory, especially as they were contesting their first national election after 17 years, 10 of which were spent fighting a bloody war.

Along with the rise of the Maoists, the election also saw the fall of King Gyanendra, with the 17.6 million-strong electorate voting against both the monarchy and the ruling parties.

Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's Nepali Congress (NC), the biggest party in Nepal’s interim parliament, could muster only 110 seats, while its traditional rival, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML), came in a weak third with 103 seats.

Hailed as a successful election by former US president Jimmy Carter, the EU and major foreign governments, the Constituent Assembly poll saw a 63.29 percent voter turnout, with women and youth dominating.

"We will win because our 10-year People's War was fought to give women equal rights," Maoist Minister for Physical Planning and Work Hisila Yami had predicted in an interview with ISN Security Watch on the eve of the election. "It fought for the uplift of the Dalits [a community once regarded as untouchables] and ethnic communities."

The prediction foreshadowed the reality, with women and first-time voters throwing their weight behind the former rebels. About 53 percent of the voters were women, while nearly 35 percent were youths.

"It was a mandate for change, for a new leadership," analyst Prabhakar Shumsher Jung Bahadur Rana, King Gyanendra's uncle by marriage and his business advisor, told ISN Security Watch. "The ruling parties failed to consider the demography factor and nominate youth representatives. The verdict not only went against the ruling parties but against past-retirement leaders as well."

It was a personal defeat for the octogenarian Koirala, who saw six members of his family routed, including his daughter Sujata Koirala, minister without portfolio. Most NC ministers lost, while Koirala's critics won.

It was the same with the UML. While most UML ministers had a poor showing, the party's chief for 15 years, Madhav Kumar Nepal, experienced a stunning defeat in both his constituencies at the hands of little-known Maoist contenders. The debacle forced him to quit as party chief, while the UML was forced to quit the coalition government.

New race for power

Though the Maoists have won the battle of the ballot, the war is not over yet.

Even as the chairman of the Maoist party, Pushpa Kamal Dahal - better known by his nom de guerre "Prachanda" - announced his intention to head the new government, there are indications that the NC will not give up so easily.

"The Constitution says a party needs a two-thirds majority to form or dissolve the government," former NC minister Gopal Man Shrestha, one of the few NC leaders to fare well in the election, told reporters at a press conference last week. "Since the Maoists do not have that, Koirala should continue to be prime minister.

"Prachanda can't head the government since he is also the chief of his party's guerrilla army. There can't be an armed prime minister."

Hectic negotiations are underway among the major parties to cobble a quick alliance. While the Maoists are wooing the UML, the NC is parleying with the smaller parties. There is also talk of amending the Constitution so that a simple majority will suffice to form or dissolve the government.

The Maoists, on their part, want a presidential form of government with Prachanda as the "first president of a republic Nepal," a demand that is likely to be resisted by the other parties, which are against a president with real powers.

There seems little hope for embattled King Gyanendra, who triggered an anti-monarchy wave three years ago when he tried to rule the country with help from a military-backed coup. The vote for the Maoists shows a national desire for the abolition of the 239-year-old crown, with over two dozen royalist parties failing to win any sizeable support.

The biggest royalist party that contested the election, the Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, was annihilated in the first phase of the election, failing to obtain a single seat in the race for 240 directly contested seats. Though the second phase, in which 335 seats were decided on the basis of proportional representation (PR), gave the royalists four seats, it has been reduced to a fringe party.

"The king has less than a month," Prachanda told journalists last week after meeting Nepal's major donors to discuss the formation of the new government. "At its first meeting, the [newly elected] Constituent Assembly will implement a republic."

As soon as the remaining election formalities are complete - which includes the nomination of 26 representatives by the prime minister in consultation with the major parties - the new Assembly will have to hold its first meeting in 21 days and officially declare the abolition of monarchy.

"The king will have to leave the palace, which will be turned into a museum," Prachanda's deputy, Baburam Bhattarai, told a private television station. "If he leaves voluntarily and facilitates the process, we will guarantee his rights to live in the country as a law-abiding citizen with economic, cultural and social rights."

However, the Maoist hardliners have raised their voice against this, saying the king should not be allowed any privileges.

The chastened palace has decided to wait and watch.

On the eve of the election, there was a surprise message from the king, urging his "beloved countrymen" to go out and vote without fear. Then, when the first results started coming in, there was a second message, expressing his satisfaction with the election.

However, since then, the palace has remained tight-lipped, except for one short and angry repudiation following media reports speculating that the king was planning to go into exile in India.

Remaking the rebels

The Maoists now have a bigger foe to contend with - their own image.

Though they signed a peace pact two years ago and subsequently joined the government, the Maoists remain on the US State Department's watch list of terrorist organizations. Indeed, the election results are an embarrassment for Washington as it begs the question of how exactly one should define a terrorist organization. Despite Carter's urgings that the Bush administration should "do business" with the former rebels, the US is yet to announce any shift in its policy.

To ensure a change, the Maoists will have to change their image of being an armed outfit.

Asked last week if his party would "renounce violence" once it heads the government, Prachanda's reply was equivocal.

"Right now, we can't renounce all kinds of violence," he said. "[Only] reactionary violence."

Maoist lawmaker Janardan Sharma "Prabhakar," who is also a deputy commander of the guerrilla People's Liberation Army (PLA), has ruled out disbanding it.

"There is no question of disbanding the PLA," Prabhakar said at a press conference. "As per the peace pact, it has to be integrated with the state army."

The way to such an integration is rocky, as the Nepal army, once a royalist force used to hunt down the guerrillas, nurtures serious reservations.

"The army must be apolitical," NA spokesman Brigadier-General Ramindra Chhetri told ISN Security Watch. "Also, recruitment has to be made on the basis of physical, mental and psychological capabilities."

In the meantime, Washington's embarrassment aside, there is acute apprehension in neighboring India about the fallout of a Maoist victory on the Indian subcontinent.

With Maoists or Naxalites (revolutionary communist groups born out of the Sino-Soviet split in the Indian communist movement) growing increasingly active in several Indian states in the east and south, there is the fear of a continued alliance between Nepal's Maoists and the Indian armed groups.

During the People's War, Naxalite groups were known to have trained the PLA. On the eve of the polls, India's national security advisor, M K Narayanan, publicly said India desired the NC to win since it did not know where it stood with the Maoists.

"We have ideological sympathy for the Indian groups since they too are communist parties," Maoist spokesman and Information and Communications Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara told ISN Security Watch after his party returned to parliament in 2006. "However, we have no other links with them."

With a Maoist government in Nepal, India will also have to face the demand for the scrapping or review of "unequal" bilateral treaties, especially the controversial Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty of 1950 that Nepal says gave India a whip hand in Nepalese defense deals.

Nepal's northern neighbor, China, is also anxious about the Maoists, whom it had earlier disowned as "anti-government forces," tarnishing the image of Chinese leader Mao Zedong.

Now, however, China, unlike Washington, is ready to work with the Maoists to ensure that its own interests are met.

Last week, a Communist Party of China (CPC) delegation visited Nepal to meet its top leaders, including the Maoists. Beijing is now promising to extend its Tibet railway from Lhasa to Khasa, a market town on the Sino-Nepal border, in five years in an effort to improve connectivity and trade between the two countries.

China is also offering assistance to develop Nepal's hydropower sector and establish links between the CPC and Maoists. In return, China wants the Maoists to follow the Koirala government's "One China" policy, which regards Tibet as an inalienable part of China, and to prevent anti-China protests or activities by Tibetan refugees in Nepal.

The Buddhist kingdom of Bhutan, which held its first general election last month, is also watching the unfolding drama in Nepal. The Maoist movement, which is on the verge of toppling its royal family, has already inspired a Bhutan Maoist Party in exile with similar intentions.

Nepal's new government will have to check the flight of capital, tackle a fuel and power crisis and write a new constitution. Soon after the election, Koirala pledged that the new constitution would be written in two years. The coming days will show if the parties will be able to rise above petty politics and complete this task, which is regarded as the keystone to bringing peace, stability and development to Nepal.