Sushil-led Governmnet-45: Nepal: Maoists But Maoists

Siddhi B Ranjitkar

The year 2014 had been a turbulent year for both the Maoists that had went the mainstream politics and that did not. The mainstream Maoists tolerated almost a total defeat in the general elections held in November 2013, and had to endure the fallout of the defeat. Other Maoists staying out of the general elections laughed at the mainstream Maoists but later they also became the laughingstock. Almost at the end of the year 2014, Netra Bikram Chand ‘Biplav’ gave birth to another Maoist party that wanted to restore its past victory and political glamour.

The two main parliamentary political parties such as NC and CPN-UML believed that they had done with the Maoists particularly the UCPN-Maoist in the general elections held in November 2013 for a new constituent assembly. The CPN-Maoist of Mohan Vaidhya did not participate in the elections rather wanted to disrupt them but could not. NC and CPN-UML had the two-thirds majority. They rightly believed that they could do whatever they liked. They went wild with the mandate given by the voters. They even forgot to thank Vaidhya and his cadres that had made the UCPN-Maoist failure in the elections.

UCPN-Maoist leaders became nervous about the poll defeat. First thing they did was to declare the elections were invalid as there were many irregularities in voting process and so on. Soon, they realized that they had announced the voting was perfect and they would be waiting for the results. As the counting of the votes went in favor of NC and CPN-UML, UCPN-Maoist leaders spent sleepless night and next morning declared that they would not accept the people’s verdict. Later on, they did.

Other Maoists headed by Mohan Vaidhya enjoyed the poll defeat of the UCPN-Maoist. They thought that they had finished off the UCPN-Maoist. The remaining leaders and cadres would come to join hands with them but they did not realize that UCPN-Maoist had moved far ahead along with NC and CPN-UML; so, they could not turn back at any cost. For the Vaidhya Maoists, the defeat of the UCPN-Maoist at the elections was their victory.

Breaking away from the UCPN-Maoist, the Vaidhya Maoists believed that they could change the political landscape. They had promised their cadres that they would launch another revolution; they would capture land and give it to the cadres; they would revive the parallel local governments, administration and even the judiciary. They would disrupt the general elections to a new constituent assembly, and they would send the UCPN-Maoist to hell along with the NC and CPN-UML. Practically, nothing happened. In fact, the Vaidhya Maoists became daylight ghosts.

The Vaidhya Maoists said that they had even captured the land belonging to the Chairman of Interim Election Cabinet Khil Raj Regmi and his relatives but Chairman Regmi wisely did not react to the activities of the Maoists. Regmi knew that doing anything against such illegal thing done by the Vaidhya Maoists would promptly provoke them to further illegal activities. Regmi was to hold elections to a new constituent assembly peacefully. His patience paid off.

The Vaidhya Maoists wanted an all-party-roundtable conference to promulgate a new constitution. Nobody listened to them. They said that they would neither participate in the general elections nor they would allow the general elections to be held; nobody even cared about it. They called for a ten-day general strike just before the general elections. They could not enforce it. Nepalese had been disgusted with the call for shutdowns. Nepalese had been ready to fight individually against such a call for shutdown. The Election Commission successfully took the election materials to all the constituencies. The elections were done perfectly well.

One thing the Vaidhya could do was to stop Chairman of UCPN-Maoist holding election rallies in the areas the Vaidhya Maoists were in majority. They also could close the roads that Chairman Prachanda was to travel for election rallies. Chairman Prachanda used the army helicopter to avoid the surface travel. The army waived the payment of Rs 6.7 million for using the helicopter by Chairman Prachanda, according to the local media report.

When the election results went against the UCPN-Maoist, the Vaidhya Maoists were sure that they had taught one or two lessons to Chairman of UCPN-Maoist Prachanda. Soon, it became clear that the Vaidhya Maoists learned a hard lesson, too. Chairman Vaidhya woke up to the reality that the coalition of the NC and CPN-UML would put most of his cadres behind bars. Vaidhya challenged the government to arrest him rather than his cadres.

Thinking they had already broken the spine of the Maoists, NC and CPN-UML had started off reviving the conflict-era murder cases. Belatedly, poor Vaidhya comprehend that what he had done to the UCPN-Maoist was really wrong. He apprehended that hitting the UCPN-Maoist had been as good as hitting himself. Vaidhya moved closer to Chairman Prachanda to jointly fight against the NC and CPN-UML coalition government taking up any conflict-era cases.

Sitting on the fence, Vaidhya did a great damage to the Maoists he took away from Prachanda. Cadres wanted power, money, and glamour that the people’s war had brought them. They did not want to remain idle. However, Vaidhya was lost in the political turbulence. He could not understand that soon he would be going down in the turbulence and vanish forever.

Vaidhya’s lieutenants such as Badal, Gajurel, Pampha Bhusal, and Dev Gurung to name a few had been making a threatening public speeches for almost a year. They could neither change the national political situation nor could make any dent on the minds of the people they thought they would. Nothing had happened. Chairman Mohan Vaidhya had not been as dashing as Chairman Prachanda. Vaidhya kept the top leaders and the cadres inactive. Some of them knew that they would be redundant soon.

The worst thing happened to the Vaidhya Maoists was ‘Biplav’ taking away most of the Maoist warriors almost at the end of 2014. That reduced Vaidhya to a significantly small party. With ‘Biplav’ gone, the Vaidhya Maoist leaders became the commanders without army. The party had several heads such as Badal, Gajurel, Pampha Bhusal, and Dev Gurung but no hands and legs to function properly. What they could do without hands and feet.

What ‘Biplav’ did was he held a national convention of his party also called CPN-Maoist in Dang on January 7 & 8, 2015. At the convention, ‘Biplav’ emerged as the national leader. Previously, he looked more like a second-generation leader with the charm of a revolutionary leader. Speaking at the convention, ‘Biplav’ warned the NC and CPN-UML of his party seriously launching another revolution, and fighting against them if they were to attempt to finish off his party.

Concerning the Beni incident National Human Rights Commission had recently wanted to open up, ‘Biplav’ said, “I was the commander of the Beni attack. If the government revives war time incidents such as the Beni case, we are ready to give birth to many other Beni incidents.” He warned of reviving the conflict-era people’s government and kangaroo courts to counter the constitutional body’s move. (Thehimalayantimes.com, January 7, 2015)

‘Biplav’ also said that his party would not accept a new constitution to be promulgated on January 22, 2015 as a constitution promulgated without concerning the people's lives, livelihood and nationalism could not be acceptable. (Nepalnews.com, January 9, 2015)

At the closed sessions of the ‘Biplav’ Maoists’ convention held in Dang, they decided to give new lives to the people’s army, people’s government, and the people’s courts at the local level. They also decided to have the two main prongs of the party programs. One program would be open another hidden. (CPN M revives single-person leadership, January 10, 2015, Thehimalayantimes.com)

Obviously, the ‘Biplav’ Maoists could not run the parallel government openly. So, it has to be hidden one. Everybody knew that setting up a parallel government was illegal. It has to be hidden one but open wherever they could capture the land by force and keep it with force as they did in the past. This time, they would have an open legal political faction while an illegal faction would run other businesses. It would make them easy to join the mainstream politics.

The question was whether ‘Biplav’ could make any difference when Vaidhya could not. Vaidhya’s failure had been his inaction. Even some actions Vaidhya took were enforced half-heartedly. He did not enforce the ten-day shutdown during the elections. He could not force other political parties to call an all-party roundtable conference. Vaidhya had been simply waiting for other political parties to ruin by themselves. Unlike Vaidhya, ‘Biplav’ went straight into actions. He held the national convention of the party after two months he came out of the Vaidhya Maoist. Probably, he would enforce the plans and the programs of the party passed in the general convention held in Dang on January 7 & 8, 2015.

The second question was whether Nepalese would support ‘Biplav’ or not. Political leaders of different parties had been betraying Nepalese one movement after another and one election after another. The likely political scenario would be Nepalese would not mind whether they would have sincere leaders through revolutions or through elections. They needed sincere leaders so that they could either voted them to power or bring them to power through revolution so that Nepalese would not need to pay for the state service they were supposed to receive as taxpayers.

Probably, ‘Biplav’ was serious about it. He also knew the people’s frustration. He said, “We are raising genuine concerns of the people” in the interview, published in Myrepublic.com in the first week of December 2014.

The concerns of the people were quite evident. They wanted citizenship certificates without harassment, run businesses without bribing the State offices, they wanted the protection from the police rather than harassment, and certainly they wanted jobs in the country. They did not want the monopoly of the political cadres on bidding for the contracts of the State jobs. They did not want the rich people paying for the slot in the parliament.

Speaking at a mass rally held by the recent CPN-Maoist at Khullamanch in Kathmandu on Friday, December 26, 2013, Chand (‘Biplav’) opined that his party would not accept the new constitution drafted through the CA. “The current CA is fake. This CA is not legitimate and the people have not approved it,” (To some extent CA had been the hired members’ club, as the political parties nominated to the persons that bid highest amounts) he claimed. He alleged that the current CA was of millionaires. “This is not my statement,” said Chand. “It was said by Nepali Congress lawmaker Gagan Thapa. Didn’t the UML comrades said whoever paid Rs 20 million became the lawmaker?” said Chand. (“Current CA is not genuine: Chand,” Ekantipur.com)

Speaking to the interviewer of Myrepublica.com concerning the ‘unified revolution”, ‘Biplav’ said, “Unified revolt does not advocate for rights and welfare of one particular class, like peasants and working class. It aims to accommodate people from the hills, and rural villages and urban towns, and the poor and the middleclass. New revolution has to reflect the concerns of broader constituency. It will be different from traditional revolutions. It is time to think beyond Marxist, Leninist and Maoist ideology because the context has changed. We need to devise the outline of revolution that people can identify with and that reflects common aspiration. This is the fundamental of ‘unified revolution.’”

‘Biplav’ was presenting an alternative to the current corrupt politicians that did think nothing of other than making money while in power. They believed that staying in power and using the state mechanism they could win the elections. Some politicians wrongly believed that they could bribe the voters at the time of elections, or they could buy the votes. That might be true to the tiny numbers of voters. Voters gave one opportunity after another to the political parties hoping they would do better for the country but politicians simply went on thinking that voters were only a small tool for grabbing the power but the large tool was to make a lot of money out of multi-billion power and infrastructures projects.

Most of the time politicians did not understand voters. In 1990, voters gave a clear mandate to the NC thinking it would lead the country to minimize the economic disparity, and the social evils giving an equal opportunity to all the common folks but it did not happen. In the next elections in 1994, voters gave a majority to the CPN-UML but not the majority required for having an independent government; so the CPN-UML needed to go along with the NC but both the CPN-UML and NC lost their true political path and followed the corrupt path of the panchayat regime. These NC and CPN-UML had not stepped out of that wrong path, yet. Then, in 2008, voters pushed the newly emerged CPN-Maoist and Madheshi political parties to power. They simply wasted the voters’ mandate. In 2013, voters went back to the NC and CPN-UML but soon it became clear that they had not improved their habit of indulging in corruption, and they simply wanted to follow the corrupt path set by the panchayat regime in the past.

‘Biplav’ was to launch a two-pronged political movement. One was the regular political movement for mobilizing the rural and urban vocal people that wanted to bring the political, economical and social changes in the lives of the common folks. UCPN-Maoist and Madheshi political parties had failed in doing so. NC and CPN-UML had not being for doing so. They wanted to continue the rule of the landlords, merchants, bureaucrats, and the police. Another was to capture the areas for setting up parallel governments at the local level. It might be challenging as ‘Biplav’ needed to face the armed police force and even the army.

In view of the current disgusting activities of the political leaders, ‘Biplav’ might garner the support of both the rural and urban people. UCPN-Maoist could not keep up the grassroots level supporters because of its policy not benefiting them. Vaidhya Maoists had abandoned their leaders and joined ‘Biplav’ Maoists. Ultimately, ‘Biplav’ might emerge as the sole Maoist leader if the current political deadlock were to continue.

After the elections held in 2013, the four major political parties such as NC, CPN-UML, UCPN-Maoist and Madheshi parties led the country to the current political dead-end. Certainly, people had been highly dissatisfied with the performances of the political parties after the elections held in 2013. Political leaders changed their minds overnight after they got elected. NC and CPN-UML thought that voters had mandated them to rob the nation. Thus, Nepalese politicians cheated the voters time and again but they would not be able to cheat perpetually. People would bring them to justice.

January 15, 2015