Kathmandu: The UML and its roadmap remains in focus this week too. The party’s compulsions are many. Its grassroots is being swept away by the Maoists. Of the past thirteen years of democracy, it has been able to nurture its organization from government in the nine months it held sway under the Man Mohan Adhikary ministry. What ever it gained as junior party in government was lost in the Bam Dev Gautam split and the last general elections the CPN-UML had partnered the RPP and Girija Koirala’s electoral coalition government.
To boot, the party is loosing heavily under the current government what with Surya Bahadur Thapa’s undisclosed alliance with the Girija-Congress. The period since Thapa has come to power has allowed the Girija-Congress to galvanize its cadre on the streets in preparation of elections which Koirala has publicly declared he will face. The UML remains walking a tightrope juggling between the three contradictory public moods which demand constitutionalism, monarchy and republicanism.
In the process, the UML continues to lose. Its flirtation with the Maoists prevents it from admitting that a much stronger agenda than its roadmap is essential to compel the Maoists to come to the negotiating table. It needs the volatility of the continuing street agitation to press its demands to lead the government and it can’t distance itself from the congress which thrills over the possibility of retaining a radical stand at the UML’s expense.
The UML must clearly budge somewhere. The monarchy insists that an all-party option face the Maoists in restoring constitutionalism. The congress ensures that an all-party stance will not emanate from the UML’s alliance with the congress on the streets. The Maoists gleefully provoke radicalism to retain the UML’s grassroots ideologically. And, the Thapa government ensures that the UML keeps loosing at the current level and more if and when elections take place.
It is not without meaning therefore that the Thapa coterie confidently attracts cadre predicting that the government will not be dissolved, will hold elections and will emerge stronger. By doing so, it is rendering precarious the overwhelming RPP majority over which it never held sway. At the same time, it is threatening to isolate the UML leadership exposing its government ambitions before the lay public and its ideological prevarication before the cadre.. Simultaneously, it is rendering precarious the congress-Deuba ambitions nurturing the Girija-Congress organization while at the same time it is rendering the Congress-Koirala organization more dependent on itself. Surya Bahadur Thapa has it made at the moment.
Unless, that is, something budges somewhere. Until then, this is clearly at the expense of the King’s initiative of October 4th. While Thapa has it made, continuing street agitation and the inadequate popular and organized response to ensure the retention of public support for the King divert the people towards the options being given. A more feasible answer at the King’s behest would have to be the leadership of the UML in the creation of an all-party government for which perhaps it will have to forsake the leadership of the government itself. For this, Madhav Nepal’s Prime Ministerial ambition remains the fundamental stumble block.