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Holy water
Niraj Aryal
Clear it may not look entirely but the unfolding events one by one reveal the Maoist strategies to some extent. In sum, analyzing the eight points agreement between the government and the Maoists, bring to light that the only remaining real communist party in Nepal is ready to wear democratic clothes for which they had a sort of allergy few years/days/hours (?) back. This agreement, thus just symbolizes democratic cleansing of the Maoists.
As the Maoists are readying themselves to be a part of legal government in Kathmandu this was a much needed move. The Maoists wanted to portray themselves to the rest of the world that they no longer believe in the aged dogmatic communist philosophies of the good old-days of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Ivanovich Lenin and more recently of the Mao Tse Tung, for which the western democracies have a sort of allergy admittedly.
Analyzing the eight-point agreement (read it); the first and the last points are just a formality. Whereas, the third point dealing with the UN involvement may prove to be decisive in attaining long-term peace in the country, but this issue may not look as simple as it is.
It is not so simple because the Indian government through some quarters in Delhi and its pay-roll cohorts in Kathmandu have started airing their interest for some kind of role in the settlement process and since long it is busy propagating its distaste over the UN involvement in Nepal. But the difficulty is that, considering innumerable ongoing conflicts in India (which is no less than her gigantic population) and the Indian governments' repeated failure to tackle them at home, how will their involvement in Nepal help ease the situation here? India must be told to look at her own problems rather than eying on Nepal. We can sort out our problems and issues on our own. We don't want to lose Karnali or some other Nepali rivers for free by inviting you in our issues.
In all, the remaining points in the agreement except number five may just have been inducted to provide the Maoists a swift exit form their traditional posture. But the most interesting among eight points is number five, which deals with the national issues. I paste it for your perusal, “5. Decide issues of national interests having long-term effects through consensus”. Does this include the controversial issue of 1950 treaty with India? Perhaps not.
As I read it I find it more vague, and taking into account growing suspicion among men in the streets in relation to this point, the failure of the SPA along with the Maoist to name those issues specifically, adds more suspicion. The fear of the India factor perhaps.
The SPA-silence over national issues is understandable, whereas the Maoists too repeatedly failing to cover the national issues make their strategy also incredulous among matured analysts in Kathmandu. This clearly indicates that the Maoists by touching these issues in the one hand desire for instant popularity at home, whereas on the other do not want to annoy their mentors in New Delhi. This is clearly a traditional survival tactic in Nepali politics, said one analysts commenting on the Maoist position in the eight-point agreement. The annoying fact is that amid so many welcoming changes, the political parties and the Maoists have quite happily kept the tradition alive.
On the other, if the Maoists wholeheartedly follow the agreement then their future course could also be a point of interest. The point here is that as the Maoists are getting closer to the UML ideologically, the question is how the nouveau democrats in the Nepali politics will keep themselves apart in the days to come from their rivals? The analysis suggests that in the future the UML and the Maoists may turn out to be ferocious rivals, as in the recent times mainly the UML among others have quite cleverly hijacked the majority Maoist agenda. This also nullifies the achievements made by the Maoists by sacrificing poor Maoist cadres during the decade long insurgency. Not to loose more, Prachanda’s appearance in Kathmandu thus proves his haste for power and a soft landing to the decade long meaningless armed rebellion. The rebellion becomes meaningless as the recent HOR historic decisions reveal that the issues that the Maoists carried could have been sorted out democratically and that too through the grand use of the parliament.
It is natural the Maoists' supporters may share a different perspective over these issues.
À la semaine prochaine!
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