More game plans if Maoists turn tame?

April 9, 2003
3 MIN READ
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Kathmandu: Two crowds are being drawn amidst dwindling mass interests in the mainstream political parties. The Maoists have a mobile visibility of both listeners and speakers. The King has a mass of adoring and the hopeful.

Much of the fire and ice have been tempered in the speeches of the new Maoist politics who have of late been warning against being played with in a cat and mouse game. The King, on the other hand, repeats his Biratnagar commitment favoring multiparty democracy. The Maoists claim no compromises in their original stance of constituent assembly, interim government and republicanism. The King wants democracy to serve national interests.

The public at large treated lavishly by the media of the variety of public standpoints in Nepali politics can’t help but wondering what is afoot.

As the week too obviously showed the mass is with the King and so is the initiative. Willy Nilly, Nepal’s politics and political parties has got to revolve around the King who must remain cajoling and coaxing the political sector to cooperate in the need to put our ramshackle political process back on track in his role as a constitutional monarch.

Already the past six months of rule from his appointed government has drawn flak for reducing the King’s initiative and speculation is rife that Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand is either on his way out or a major reshuffle is overdue if nothing to take back the initiative that the King must possess in order to press the political sector to coalesce.

Not unsubstantiated charges of the wind drawn out of the much hyped anti-corruption moves demand a government on toes. The complaint is that entrenched interests in the bureaucracy play havoc with inexperienced ministers while the malleable Prime Minister Chand retains his unassertive political posture. The damage done is surely on the monarchy and the King at this stage can least afford it.

A change would thus seem imminent in favor of action and experience. This, prior to the now delaying talks since government will have to face a renewed spurt of organized opposition once the government releases their team for the talks.

One revealing novelty of the week is the resurfacing of the old hand Republican Ram Raja Prasad Singh in Kathmandu who has turned up of a sudden lobbying for elections to a constituent assembly to ease the transition to republicanism. Singh who in the 70s advocated violence and initiated bomb-blasts in Kathmandu after the Referendum held in the 80s was sitting mum after election losses in the 90s. The significance in the midst of softening Maoists standpoints can’t be lost to political watchers here.