Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Prachanda, has reiterated his party is ready to accept any result of the election of the constituent assembly.
Chairman of the CPN (M) Prachanda as seen on the BBC. nepalnews.com/rh
Chairman of the CPN (M) Prachanda as seen on the BBC. nepalnews.com/rh
In the first-ever TV interview with the BBC, Prachanda said his party would accept monarchy if the people decided so.
Talking to BBC’s Charles Haviland at an undisclosed location on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the Maoist insurgency, Prachanda insisted that election for the constituent assembly was the best alternative to resolve the Maoist insurgency. The rebels say the assembly would draft a new constitution for the country.
Prachanda said he believed such an assembly would make Nepal into a republic. But he said his party would accept “the people’s verdict”.
“Whatever decision the people give, we are ready to accept this,” Prachanda told the BBC.
Asked if that meant he would theoretically be able to accept a people’s verdict of keeping the monarchy, he said: “Yes, theoretically it is like that.”
Responding to another query, the rebel supremo said he was “saddened” by the number of deaths in the conflict and by what he called accidents such as the death of children in bomb blasts.
Justifying the violent movement his party has been waging, Prachanda said, “Everyone knows when we were in the parliament, we put forward 40-point demands so that the problems of Nepalis would be solved in a peaceful way. But, when the ruling classes were not ready to solve the problems of Nepalis peacefully, and instead started victimising our party workers and people who supported us in a brutal and illegitimate fashion, they compelled us and the Nepali people to take up arms.”
Regarding the peaceful political outlet of the Maoist insurgency as per the agreement reached with the mainstream political parties in last November, the Maoist leader said, “We are always ready for peace and when we started the people’s war, after a while we said that if the ruling classes would want to peacefully solve the problems of Nepali people, we were ready.
Now, in the agreement with the parties, we are still saying that if there is an environment where people can give their own verdict, through an election of a constituent assembly, where people have a voice on the kind of governance that they want, if that right is with the people, then we are ready to have a political competition with the parties. And this is the truth,” he added.
Asked if the Maoists aimed to conquer the capital, Kathmandu, militarily, he said that foreign help to the government had made that difficult, and that such an action would “cause a lot of harm to the Nepali people”.
He said the king, who took direct political power a year ago, had left no room for compromise.
On the question of permanent ceasefire and peaceful outlet to the insurgency, Prachanda said, “For a peaceful solution of this problem, what we are saying is that both the armies should be monitored by the UN or a similar organization and go to the people; and that later they can be re-organized into a new Nepali army and that we are ready for. That is why we are not the problem.”