Thaindian News

By Sudeshna Sarkar
Kathmandu, Aug 23 (IANS) Though Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas suffered only one suicidal loss in the course of their 10-year war against the state, their chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda was inflicted an incredible fifth defeat in a row when parliament went to vote Monday to elect a new prime minister.

The former revolutionary, who had won the same election two years ago with thumping majority, failed to garner even simple majority in the 599-seat parliament Monday. He remained restrained to just 246 votes while his rival, former deputy prime minister Ram Chandra Poudel of the Nepali Congress, fared worse with about half of that, 124 votes.

The Maoist chief, who had entered the ring Monday claiming he could win since he had managed to woo a bloc of four parties from the Terai, which had been sitting neutral earlier, proved to have been deluded as 206 lawmakers abstained from voting, opposing the Maoists’ failure to fulfil their peace commitments.

With 111 MPs voting against him, the 55-year-old former prime minister could get only 10 votes from outside his party, tantalisingly short of the halfway mark of 300 needed to form the new government.

Though the Maoists are the largest party in parliament with 236 legislators of their own, they have consistently failed to win in five rounds of election as the Terai parties and the communists, two of the four largest groups in parliament, have been sitting neutral all through, reducing the election to a farce.

Nepal has been without a government since Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned in June due to intense Maoist pressure.

The communists, miffed at their candidate being out of the reckoning due to intra-party rivalry, have been sitting on the fence, saying the contestants had refused to heed their demands.

The demands, mostly targeted at the Maoists, asked the former rebels to empty their cantonments harbouring nearly 20,000 fighters, dismantle their paramilitary units and return the public property captured during the People’s War.

The Terai parties say they will support Prachanda only if he agrees on an autonomous Madhes state in the Terai plains, a demand that has been refused due to fears it will lead to disintegration of the state.

Angered by the protracted crisis, the other parties in parliament have threatened they would begin a protest movement and boycott parliament.

The continuing impasse caused President Ram Baran Yadav to express concern and ask the parties to create a consensus.

A new crisis looms close next month when the tenure of the UN agency helping in the peace process comes to an end.

The UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), which has been monitoring the arms and fighters of the Maoists’ People’s Liberation Army, faces an uncertain future with the ruling parties and the army saying its tenure should not be extended.

Only the Maoists are pressing for it to stay on, threatening that the peace process will break down if it leaves Nepal.

The poll labyrinth raises fresh doubts about Nepal’s ability to implement a new constitution next year.

It failed to do so this May and plunged the nation into an unprecedented crisis.

(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)