Shadow over freedom

A 12-point agenda that brought together the Maoists and seven pro-democracy parties, including the Nepali Congress, nudged by an initiative from Delhi, makes it mandatory to hold the Constituent Assembly polls. As part of the agreement signed in November 2005, they were to work together for peace, and democracy — which also meant the Maoists giving up their armed insurgency.

A series of other agreements, including the comprehensive peace agreement between the government and the Maoists, have followed within the framework of the Delhi agreement. But on September 6, Baburam Bhattarai, key strategist of the Maoists, declared that the agreement has become redundant, and that the parties need to find a new basis for working together.

The biggest success they could garner was to get the Nepali Congress’s endorsement of the republican agenda. This follows an aborted understanding between Prime Minister G.P. Koirala and the Maoists earlier to have the current interim Parliament — a hand-picked legislative body — converted into the constituent assembly. India made it clear that it was not going to recognise any deal that came at the cost of elections to the constituent assembly. Officially, India has also stated that it would accept the verdict of the people of Nepal on the fate of the monarchy through the constituent assembly. However, there is speculation in political circles in Kathmandu that the Indian Embassy which has enormous clout over Nepal’s domestic politics, has clearly sided with the pro-republic initiative of the major political parties. The Nepali Congress going pro-republic now, many say, is the outcome of such pressures.

After all, the Nepali Congress which has led all the three pro-democracy movements in the past — in 1950, 1990 and 2006 — has always spoken in favour of the constitutional monarchy and pro-democracy forces coming together. The party’s founder-member B.P. Koirala returned to Nepal in December 1976 ending an 8-year long political exile with the call for ‘national reconciliation’ — that Nepal’s sovereignty and integrity would come under threat if the two forces did not patch up. But his brother G.P. Koirala and the Nepali Congress have apparently rejected BP’s reconciliation theory. The Nepali Congress under G.P. Koirala believes that the monarchy has outlived its relevance.

Prithvi Narayan Shah, the 10th forefather of the present king, has been credited with creating modern Nepal in 1768 and history lists him as its architect. But the future Nepal may not accept the king as a symbol of the unity. What appears almost definite is this: Nepal’s future is captive in the hands of the Maoists. They can dictate any agenda to the prime minister and the political parties without the people having any role in that. From a failed monarchy, Nepal slowly, but visibly, makes its move towards another kind of authoritarianism. And the election in November either looks impossible or irrelevant to this expected outcome.