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VOL. 27, NO. 31, April 18, 2008 (Baishakh 06 2065 B.S.)
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MAOIST WAVE
Red Alert
The electoral outcome has left many key stakers in a flux
By SUSHIL SHARMA
“I am amazed too,” Maoist chief Prachand told prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala when he called on him at his Baluwatar residence on Sunday.
The reaction was on the unexpectedly strong showing of the Maoists in the constituent assembly elections.
Prachanda, accompanied by Baburam Bhattarai, pleaded for continued “cooperation” and alliance as the Maoists looked all set to lead the new government.
Koirala was non-committal. He is under tremendous pressure from within the Nepali Congress to stay away from a Maoist-led government.
Some reports suggested that the Maoists wanted the veteran democratic leader as a ceremonial head of state under a communist government.
Koirala is widely criticized for his lust for power. But, in all probability, he is likely to shift back from the spacious Baluwatar official residence to the cozy room on the second floor of the Maharajgunj residence of the nephew Shashank Koirala.
Shashank incidentally is the only survivor in the Koirala clan’s year-end electoral massacre.
The senior Koirala is still reeling under its shock. He has been pondering what went wrong.
Sources close to him say, Koirala felt “betrayed” by the powerful forces he did trust prior to the elections.
It was this trust that led the prime minister to brush aside last-minute suggestions from senior military officials to deploy the army in the polls.
According to sources, just a few days before the vote senior military officials had warned Baluwatar about “a certain Maoist victory” because “about a third of the voters had made up their mind only days before the elections -- under duress.”
That chunk of the voters made the all the difference to the final outcome.
The Maoist victory has shocked key international powers too. Having sensed gross miscalculations as the results began to come, some of them even thought of a last-minute “damage control”.
Said a senior cabinet minister, they came up with the idea of creating a situation for a re-poll in at least 60 seats “to tame the Maoist upsurge.”
Having found no takers, the idea was dropped, according to the sources.
THE PRIME MINISTER
‘Games They Played’
A stunned prime minister sees a hidden hand in the poll setback to his party
By SUSHIL SHARMA
Prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala is in no hurry to step down even after a humiliating debacle at last week’s hustings.
He has asked Nepali Congress ministers to hold their resignation until “the entire picture becomes clear”.
A senior minister and one of Koirala’s confidants was about to announce his resignation last Monday.
But the prime minister persuaded the minister to hold the announcement until the first meeting of the constituent assembly.
Taken aback by the reversal the Nepali Congress faced in the elections, the prime minister hinted at a conspiracy, “there was a great game at play.”
The minister said that Koirala is expected to give some hints of the game as he saw it in his farewell speech at the inaugural meeting of the constituent assembly.
The meeting is due to be held within 21 days of the announcement of the complete results of the elections.
The complete results are not expected until next month.
