POLITICS-NEPAL: Lights Return but Spark Missing

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU, Apr 1 2006 (IPS) - Authorities have ended nightly power cuts in Nepal’s capital so they can smother an opposition general strike next week that movement leaders insist could trigger an end to palace rule if it was buttressed with more international pressure.

Facing the driest winter in three decades and monumental mismanagement of the second most bountiful water resources in the world, Nepal’s power authority has been “load-shedding” across the South Asian nation for months. Before this week, residents faced electricity cuts five hours a day but since Monday, those in the Kathmandu Valley only have to endure daylight outages. The government says it needs lights to ferret out Maoist rebels planning to infiltrate the Apr. 7 pro-democracy demonstration.

Other curbs are on the cards, warned members of the council of ministers chosen by King Gyanendra after he staged a bloodless coup against his appointed prime minister Feb. 1, 2005. “If the situation remains tense, curfew will be imposed,” junior minister for information and communication Shrish Samsher Rana said Thursday.

Already a handful of political party and civil society leaders have been jailed and others would have been swept up in a dragnet this week if not for a tip-off, reported the ‘Kathmandu Post’. Leaders who spoke to IPS were cautious about predicting the result of next week’s actions but insisted that the king is more isolated than at any time since he assumed the throne in 2001 and that his downfall is only a matter of time. They also agreed that the world’s nations need to put more pressure on the monarch.

“Most of the people are definitely anti-king,” said Sundar Mani Dixit, chairman of Civil Society for Peace and Democracy. “He has already alienated most of the intellectuals, lawyers, professors, doctors, and the general public by the huge rise in prices, which was not the case three to five years ago.”

“But the people haven’t got the final spark to go on the street as they did in 1990,” added Dixit in an interview at his medical clinic Saturday. “We don’t have that one particular leader, that ‘rallying rock’ who people will follow.”

The crowds who have assembled at dozens of rallies in the capital to protest the king’s move have rarely exceeded 20,000 people, despite opposition leaders predicting “human tsunamis” that would sweep the king from the palace. Many blame the low turnouts on the public’s mistrust of the political parties who ruled after 1990’s democratic revolution but have been accused of doing little to better the lives of the majority of people who live in poverty.

“The king doesn’t appear to feel the pressure and may be thinking that he will get through this period and it will subside,” said Sushil Koirala, whose Nepali Congress (NC) party led two majority governments after 1990. “But this is like the lull before the storm – when it hits you don’t know what the result will be,” added the NC vice-president.

King Gyanendra told Nepalis in 2005 that he seized power because the corrupt political parties failed to end a Maoist uprising, which emerged slowly from the dirt-poor western hills 10 years ago and has since spread across the entire nation, leaving 13,000 dead.

In February, the government held local elections as the first step in its “return to democracy”. They were boycotted by the alliance of seven main political parties and clouded by Maoist threats of violence. Only 20 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, 600 nominees withdrew their names before balloting and in some places elected officials are still living in guarded government quarters, too scared to take office.

In November, the political parties signed an “understanding” with the Maoist leaders, who guaranteed they would move into the political mainstream if the parties pledged to hold elections for a constituent assembly that would draft a new constitution. The two sides reaffirmed the understanding a week ago but it faces two main obstacles: palace opposition and continued killings and other violence by rebel forces.

Early Friday morning, a bomb exploded in a school compound in western Dailekh region, injuring a student and teacher there for a national exam. The media blamed the rebels but “I am not convinced the bombing was done by Maoists,” said Dixit, noting that security forces blocked journalists from the site after the blast whereas they are usually eager to display rebel violence.

Despite the understanding, “the ground reality will not change overnight,” argued Dixit, because communication within rebel ranks is slow and “there are certain anti-subversive forces fighting to keep the war going”.

Koirala defended the understanding with the Maoists, saying the parties were obliged to try to create an atmosphere conducive to peace when the king refused. “Our workers have been hacked to death (by Maoists). They’ve been made homeless…but just shouting for peace will accomplish nothing…we held a dialogue with them, that’s all.”

But, he added, “they must eschew violence, extortion, etc” before the agreement can advance.

“The government is provoking the situation,” added Koirala, “and taking help from the international community in the name of fighting terrorism.”

Yet both leaders noted that international opinion appears to be shifting against such a stance. For instance, China has now spoken out for reconciliation between all forces instead of labelling the struggle “an internal matter”. And U.S. President George W Bush also urged talks and did not refer to the need to support a Nepali government fighting “terrorists” when he spoke in New Delhi earlier this month.

Yet such verbal support for multi-party rule is inadequate, say the leaders. “Why doesn’t (the international community) apply more pressure, tell the king, ‘if you don’t do this, we’ll cut off aid’?” asked Koirala. “Just repeating that all the constitutional forces should come together carries no weight.”

“People have come to the street – maybe the international community doesn’t think the numbers are large enough but they should take it seriously,” he added.

According to Dixit, “Today we are one international community – you can’t leave us alone like this. If you’re prepared to take the most backward European countries for the European Union, you must take us also.”