Former rebel leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known by the nom de guerre Prachanda, was sworn in as Nepal’s prime minister on August 18, confirming his status as the country’s most powerful political leader. While the achievement sealed the victory of his Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) in its long struggle with the now-defunct monarchy, it came at the cost of a grueling 1996–2006 insurgency and some 13,000 lives. The new government will have to address the simmering instability and institutional wreckage left in the wake of the conflict, all while managing an uncertain political coalition and coping with urgent problems like food shortages and rising fuel prices.
Some of the looming troubles noted in this space in June have so far failed to materialize. For example, the three largest non-Maoist political parties in the Constituent Assembly (CA), which is tasked with writing a new constitution and serving as a legislature in the meantime, have not banded together to bar the 220-member Maoist plurality from power. Such a move could have led to a renewal of major violence. The second-ranked Nepali Congress (NC) party, which won 110 of the CA’s 575 elected seats in April 2008 balloting, managed to overcome a Maoist-backed candidate and secure the largely ceremonial presidency in a relatively close runoff vote on July 21. But the NC was essentially alone in opposing Prachanda’s rise to the premiership. Both the third-ranked Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist, or UML) and the fourth-ranked Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) joined the Maoists in the CA’s August 15 vote for prime minister, easily defeating the NC’s Sher Bahadur Deuba, who had previously held the post three times.
Still, Prachanda may have difficulty retaining the support of the MJF and UML in the long run. The UML, a moderate leftist party, could either compete with the Maoists for leadership of the left or revert to its partnership with the centrist NC, which appears set to remain in opposition. The MJF could present a greater challenge, as it represents ethnic groups in the southern Terai plains region who have been agitating—in some cases violently—for the creation of their own autonomous province. The Madhesis are inclined toward Nepal’s traditional protector, India, whereas the Maoists have adopted a more nationalist and in some ways pro-China stance, pledging to maintain a policy of equidistance between the two Asian giants. Moreover, Madhesi aspirations have sparked counterclaims of regional autonomy by rival ethnic groups, some of which have formed armed gangs that attack government offices and menace civilian aid workers and merchants. In a sign of fraught ethnic relations, newly elected vice president Paramananda Jha, nominated by the MJF, sparked protests when he took his oath of office in Hindi—which is widely used among Madhesis— rather than Nepali. Both he and President Ram Baran Yadav hail from the Terai region, which some hoped would ease Madhesi frustrations.
A report released in July by the International Crisis Group (ICG) details some of the other problems confronting the new government, including the need to fully decommission the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) or integrate it into the state security forces. Separately, the party’s Young Communist League (YCL), formerly the people’s militia, has swollen to an estimated 400,000 members since the insurgency ended with a peace accord in 2006, and the group is now implicated in extensive urban crime and disorder. The ICG report also notes that Nepal’s army, once loyal to the king, is almost totally free of civilian oversight, since the government has yet to establish a new national security council or a robust defense ministry. The president has nominal control as commander in chief, but it is doubtful that he would or could force the generals to accept former PLA fighters, or large numbers of Madhesis, into the ranks. The current arrangement may even tempt the sidelined NC, Yadav, and the army to outflank the Maoist-led government by declaring emergency rule. Meanwhile, the Maoists must simultaneously fulfill their promises of equitable land reform and return land that was seized during the insurgency, an apparent contradiction that could lead to a policy of inadequate compensation payments to property owners.
Even if the Maoists manage to wrangle Nepal’s various political parties, armed forces, and ethnic factions into a new, democratic constitution, it is unclear whether they or their rivals will abandon undemocratic habits when dealing with the many other problems at hand. The Maoists have yet to fully dismantle their parallel governance structures in the countryside—though the state equivalents in many places are in disarray—and there are few indications that the prevailing impunity for crimes committed by both sides during the insurgency will be disrupted. In this environment of unmoored institutions and lawlessness, the latest Human Rights Watch report on Tibetan protests in Nepal is not surprising. It tallied at least 8,350 arrests of Tibetans between March and July, with nearly all detainees brutally beaten and then released without charge. According to more recent reports, some 1,300 protesters were arrested on August 8 alone. Such rough enforcement of the country’s long-standing ban on “anti-China” activity may please Beijing, but it bodes ill for human rights and effective governance in the new federal democratic republic of Nepal.
Photo Credit: Flickr user j o s h
