Chairman against Chairman?

Chairman against Chairman?

By John Narayan Parajuli

Maoists have benefited most from the split between the parties and palace. The current fear is that they might emerge as the sole victor. Political parties and the civil society should scrutinize the Maoists behavior more carefully. They are closer to wielding the state power than they were ever before; more the reason to look for contradictions between their professed moderation in what are otherwise radical principles and their actions.
As the old adage goes, it is hard to teach old dog new tricks. Learning to operate within the new democratic framework has been the hardest challenge for an ambitious palace. (This adage should be applied to the Maoists too, unless proven otherwise.) Even during the reign of King Birendra, there had been interference. The palace’s “ambassadorial-quota” is one of the many interferences. Instead of protesting, the government of the day permanently gave in to the pressure. King Gyanendra’s reign is a different story altogether.
King Gyanendra has gone an extra mile in driving a wedge between the party-palace coalitions that worked well for 12 years. That alliance has now been broken as the reality has dawned that a co-habitation between the two has nearly become impossible. But the shift in the alliance is unnecessarily providing aid and comfort to the Maoists. The Maoists and the seven party agreements are political necessities in the face of the royal putsch. Although the parties are crediting themselves for being able to bring the Maoists into a mainstream style agreement, doubt persists as to whether the Maoists are sincere.

The Maoists have often flip-flopped their stance depending on the direction of the tide. Given such precedent, it is not unreasonable to doubt if they are doing the same this time too. The Maoists’ chairman Prachanda has given a series of interviews, both to national and international media in recent months—in what appears to be a well orchestrated effort to tap into the current crisis in Nepal. Prachanda’s statements have all the trappings of a seasoned politician, including the willingness to default on promises.

In an interview with the Hindu newspaper, published from Delhi, Prachanda said that his party is fully committed to a multi-party democracy, or “political competition”, in his own words, under a “new constitutional framework.”

A Constituent assembly has always been a key demand of the Maoists. It is not just a matter of our speculation that Maoists are assuming that an election for the Constituent assembly would send all its candidates crowning with victory to Singha Durbar, or wherever the seat of that hypothetical Constituent assembly would be. In that sense, they are prepared only for the initial “political competition” which they hope, in fact believe that they will sweep. “We are convinced that people will choose a democratic republic,” Prachanda told the Hindu. What happens if they lose the election? Will they start one more round of insurgency?

Let’s assume that there is a political compromise, as demanded by Maoists, and that they win a landslide majority for some mysterious reason. Why should they care to write a democratic constitution? They will be happy to call it a one-party democratic dictatorship following a “political competition.” Well of course this is a hypothetical scenario, but it is a key to understanding the tactical shift in the Maoists bottom line. God forbid, if that is the case, the seven parties are working to replace one dictatorship by another.
The Maoists are experts of both shrewd and ruthless operations. In the past they have played one party against another to actualize their cause. The three rounds of negotiations didn’t fail without reason. Of course the governments that negotiated are to be blamed too. But the biggest stumbling bloc has been the Maoists’ reluctance to compromise. The seven parties’ overly optimistic account of the Maoists’ conversion to the church of mainstream politics, against the backdrop of their intensifying activities, demands more scrutiny from the press and civil society. The Maoists have given no indication that they are prepared to shun violence in the near future, unless the seven parties are imagining. Although the Maoists statements have grown mellower (vis-à-vis their demands) in the intervening week following the agreement between them and the parties, there is every reason to believe that it is just a media stunt.

Has there really been a change of heart in the Maoists, as the seven parties have chose to believe, or as Prachanda would like everyone (except his cadres) to believe? In the same interview with the Hindu, he attempted to clarify. He insisted that the Maoists’ commitment to the “multi-party democracy” was enunciated in a party plenum last August and that it was not a tactical move. But how do we know?

It is hard to know the Maoists’ heart from the content of a mere interview. They may very well be paying lip-service. Their actions will speak louder than words in days to come. Whether or not they honor the agreement with the seven parties in letter and spirit is one of the many litmus tests. But in the mean time seven parties would be well advised to take caution: people and habits do change but not easily or frequently for that matter. One dictatorship is no substitute for another.