WHILE the resignation of President Pervez Musharraf hogged international headlines, an equally significant event took place in another part of South Asia on the same day. For the first time, an avowed Maoist was officially anointed the leader of a country.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal or Prachanda, chairperson of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), or CPN(M), was sworn in as Prime Minister on August 18. He took the oath of office in the name of the people and not in the name of truth and God as his predecessors had done. Prachanda is Nepals 17th Prime Minister in 18 years.
The CPN(M) had won the largest percentage of votes in the election to the Constituent Assembly held four months ago and bagged the most number of seats. But major parties such as the Nepali Congress (N.C.), the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist), or CPN(UML), and the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) ganged up against the CPN(M) to prevent a smooth and speedy transition. These parties formed an unprincipled alliance and managed to elect a President and a Vice-President of their choice.
However, better political sense finally prevailed on the CPN(UML) and the MJF. Their leadership took the stand that the party with the largest number of seats in the Assembly should be given the chance to head the government.
The Maoists have indicated that they want the present arrangement to continue for two years until a new Constitution is written. Only the N.C. remained steadfast in its opposition to Prachandas candidature. Its candidate for the top post, Sher Bahadur Deuba, was roundly beaten with Prachanda winning 351 of the 464 votes cast.
Not many would have bet on Prachanda holding the highest office of the land just two years after being removed from the list of most-wanted terrorists. The Maoist leadership is still on the terrorism exclusion list of the United States State Department, which bars members or associates from visiting the U.S.
Prachanda was inspired by the writings of Mao Zedong and the thinking of Abimael Guzman, founder of the Shining Path movement in Peru. Guzman, a former professor, is in prison for life and the movement is a shadow of what it was in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Ultra-left movements in South Asia continue to exert limited influence on people but Nepal is the first instance where a revolutionary party has made tangible gains by resorting to guerilla struggle.
The CPN(M) had to make some compromises to get its hand on the state machinery. After announcing their ceasefire, the Maoists committed themselves to multiparty democracy and democratic elections. They have also pledged to write a new Constitution that will take into account the multi-ethnic character of Nepal. The other major sticking point in the coming months will be the integration of the Maoist guerilla force the 19,000-strong Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) into Nepals Army.
Currently, the rebel army is housed in United Nations-monitored camps. The top brass in the Nepali Army, supported by many major parties, are reluctant to absorb their former foes. The Defence Ministry will be under the Maoists. Prachanda, before taking over as Prime Minister, had announced that he would no longer hold the post of supreme commander of the PLA.
Prachandas first foreign visit as Prime Minister will be to Beijing, where he will witness the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has already invited him to India. New Delhi has been quick to accept the ground realities in Nepal and feels that it can do business with the Maoists. Prachanda has been saying for some time now that the Maoists are not dogmatic communists and that they have accepted globalisation and the free market as facts of life.
That of course does not prevent Maoists in India from dreaming about a red corridor from Tirupati to Pashupati that would liberate the entire subcontinent.
John CherianCOMMents
COMMents
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