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April, 2004 |
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Political |
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Elections in a Year The month of
March 2004 was capped by a long-awaited announcement by the king for
holding elections. Addressing a civic reception on his honour at Pokhara
on March 28, he ordered to create suitable environment so that free and
fair elections for the House of Representatives would be held and he
could hand over the power to popularly elected representatives of the
people within the calendar year of 2061 BS that ends on mid-April 2005. The political jockeying as a part of
realignment of forces for the impending elections was underway right
from the beginning of the month. After nearly 17 months of the royal
takeover of October 4, 2003, the Nepali political spectrum seems to be
poised for a paradigm change now. The political parties are reported
changing their stand and strategy from April as their old demand for
restoration of the parliament is becoming irrelevant as the term of the
latest elected parliament (now dissolved) is to expire on April 14,
2004. That has inspired the political parties
to go for expanding the scope of their present alliance by including in
their fold the break-away faction of the Nepali Congress, headed by
former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba. Deuba’s parent organisation
Nepali Congress itself is trying to bring Deuba back into its fold.
Though the effort was yet to materialise when this matter was going to
the press, the royal announcement for the elections is expected to
hasten the process. Khum Bahadur Khadka, who had resigned as the
Secretary General of Deuba’s party after being indicted by CIAA, the
anti-corruption body, has already entered the Nepali Congress along with
some of his friends. This is expected to put further pressure on Deuba.
However, as former Prime Minister KP Bhattarai, a Congress leader senior
to Koirala, has announced his favour to Deuba, the rebel faction is
still strong. Meanwhile, the Maoists are intensifying
their activities to show their own strength in the face of claims by the
Prime Minister and Home Minister that the Maoists have now become very
weak. The Maoist attack early March on the district headquarters of
Bhojpur in the eastern hills and later on the district headquarters of
Myagdi in the western hills are interpreted as a signal from them that
they cannot be undermined. And the destruction they inflicted on Myagdi
is reported to be the severest so far. Now they are demanding the
release of their central leaders Matrika Yadav, Suresh Ale Magar and
others by the government in return for the Chief District Officer of
Myagdi and others whom they abducted after the attack in Myagdi. The Myagdi incident prompted UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan to issue a call for peaceful solution to the conflict
and this has created some stir across the political forces in Nepal.
However, while the Maoist supremo Prachanda welcomed Annan’s call, the
Home Minister rejected the possibility of UN mediation in the ongoing
conflict. In another development, the army has
accepted mistakes in Doramba incident in which it says some of the
victims killed by the army were in fact innocent and they were killed
after they had surrendered to the security forces. That was followed by
a 25-point commitment made public by the Prime Minister to honour the
international norms in human rights. In the diplomatic front, Bhekh Bahadur
Thapa, who served as ambassador to India till last year and was later
given a post of Ambassador At Large with responsibilities equivalent to
the Foreign Minister, has been confirmed as Foreign Minister and the
first important job he is undertaking is canvassing for the forthcoming
election for a seat in the Security Council of United Nations. Count Up According to the Royal Nepal Army spokesman, 1547 Maoists have been killed by the security forces till mid March since the ceasefire was broken on August 27. During the same period, 144 security personnel were killed by the Maoists. Similarly, 693 Maoists have surrendered to the authorities since December 18, 2003 till mid-March in response to the amnesty announced by the government for those who surrender. |
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