The nearly fortnight-long uncertain period which had begun in Nepal with the resignation of Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, came to an end with Shri Madhav Kumar Nepal being elected unanimously by most non-Maoist parties in the 601-member Constituent Assembly as Prime Minister. (“Nepal” is not a surname as such. Many Upadhyaya Brahmins (the Koiralas are one) living in the Terai region avoid writing Upadhyaya and instead adopt a neutral surname of “Nepal”)
Shri Madhav Nepal has been appointed Prime Minister by President Shri Ram Baran Yadav at the Rashtrapati Bhavan with two his colleagues in the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist)—Smt Vidya Bhandari (widow of well known UML leader Madan Bhandari who had died in an accident) and Shri Surendra Panday, another UML leader.
The nominees of the Nepali Congress and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum are yet to be named. May be some more party nominees join the Government in the coming days.
What is to be welcomed is the end of the deadlock in politics since ensuring peace and drafting of the Constitution are extremely important tasks before the government. One hopes the political parties of Nepal appreciate it much more than other people.
Shri Madhav Nepal had been an underground Communist leader for most of the 29 years since the political parties were under a ban imposed by the late King Mahendra in the late 1960. He had built up his faction of the seven other Communist factions who had joined the Nepali Congress at the beginning of 1990 for launching an agitation for restoring parliamentary democracy. After three months of struggle which involved more than a hundred deaths, parliamentary democracy had returned after 29 years. Two general elections were held thereafter in 1990 and 1994. In the second, the UML was the dominant partner and in it Madhav Nepal was the Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.
Interestingly, during his visit to India in late 1994, the team led by Madhav Nepal visited Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh.
This popular leader, however, was defeated in two constituencies in the general elections held on April 10 last year. He was brought in the Constituent Assembly through a provision and now has taken over as the Prime Minister. Let us hope he proves to be a success.
The change in Nepal today signifies paradigm shift in Nepal’s political development. Ever since a fortnight or so, after former Prime Minister Prachanda was said to have been proved to have expressed an untruth about the total strength of the Marxist rebels in Nepal, he has lost face in his country and the Maoist movement in Nepal as a whole. It does appear that most of the Maoists were killed (the number is said to be 10,000) in the battle with royal army and not many Maoists were available as combatants should the need arise.
The fact that it has been officially confirmed that a total of 13,246 people were killed, about 10,000 of whom were combatants showed that the Maoists have lost their fighting forces. All these 13,246 people (their dependents, one means) were paid “compensation” of Rs. 100,000 each with widows being paid Rs 10,000 more each, is evidence that the Maoist strength was not very much higher than the figure of 10,000.
The Marxists in the last year’s general elections had bagged only 29.08 per cent of the popular votes, which means that 70 per cent of the people had voted against the Marxists in that election. So, even if the Maoists launch an agitation—even a violent one— against Madhav Nepal Government, the bloodshed will not be high. And the Maoists also know it and hence will not risk it. In fact the armed revolution by the Maoists of both India and Nepal will continue—to quote Shri Pranab Mukherjee—for another 250 years or more with no success at all. Let Prachanda remember that.
