Kathmandu: Politics is art of the possible. It is equally true is that in politics one has to tolerate even “strange bed partners”.

NC president Koirala and UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal though adhere to two diametrically opposed political ideologies but yet their lust for power has forced them to sleep together.

Koirala was the one for the ouster of whom the UML uninterruptedly brought to a grinding halt the entire proceedings of the 19th session of the parliament, to recall. It was this UML which created havoc in the country and demanded unconditional resignation of a personality whom it dubbed as the main man behind the Lauda scam. Equally true is the fact that though the UML blocked the proceedings of the parliament for all along fifty-nine days but yet it gulped the perks and the facilities provided them by the parliament secretariat for all those sad and horrible days and that too unashamedly.

The fact is that for the UML, Koirala has now become all sacrosanct and the party has elevated his ranks to the post of the commander of the ongoing movement which means that Koirala, basically an arrogant and aggressive democrat, has shifted his politics that appears very close to the Left. IN so doing, Koirala is damaging the Congress’ middle role which it had been maintaining all along the past five decades of the existence of the party. The communists must have been rejoicing this clear and visible shift in Koirala’s political stance.

However, the party headed by Koirala is feeling the brunt of his new shift in his thinking of the communists. That a powerful section of the senior congress leaders oppose Koirala’s shift to the Left from the Center gets reflected from the fact that Ms. Shailaja Acharya—one of the senior most leaders of the party but at the moment completely marginalised by Koirala and his inner coterie, has declared that she is on a ten-day long fast in order to cleanse the party from its past blunders that it committed during the past thirteen years of democratic order in the country. Ms. Acharya in so doing has openly admitted that her party has committed Himalayan blunders in the past; that her party needed to be cleansed and that her party had deviated from its original standpoints; that her party’s excessive closeness with the Left bodes ill not only for the party but for the nation as well.

Though Ms. Acharya has declared that her observance of fast for ten days has nothing to do with the agitation of the agitating five but then yet her sudden decision to go on for fast and that too for as long as ten days is bound to affect the party’s decision to wage a final struggle to force the King to yield.

In effect. Ms. Acharya’s fresh stance does indicate that the party headed by Koirala possess two differing views vis-à-vis the ongoing movement. The one that toes Koirala line and the other obviously the Shailaja line.

Shailaja’s abrupt decision to go on fasting appears, analysts guess, that she has been told to do so by some of her good old Indian friends. That she must have been told to differ with Koirala’s stance gets also confirmed by the revelation made by Dr. Sundar Mani Dixit who has said that according to reports some Nepali leaders currently engaged in the movement were told by their Indian Gurus not to wage a movement against the King. According to Dixit, the Indian leaders told their Nepali disciples that the movement might boomerang.

This means that Nepali leaders go to India to bag blessings for a cause that is purely and exclusively Nepali affair.

But those who know Koirala better say that he alone was sufficient to ruin the country politically.

How Koirala leads the movement as commander will have to be watched. What will also be watched whether Koirala becomes able to garner “neighboring foreign” support much the same way he and his party together with the Left managed to bring in foreign intervention during 1990.

If he succeeds, the movement is a success. If he does not, the rest is predictable.