KATHMANDU: Chanting members of the Maoist student union swarmed onto the streets of Nepal’s capital Saturday to protest fuel price hikes — but had to cut short the demonstration when they ran out of kerosene to fuel their homemade torches. That incident can be seen as a metaphor for the “people’s movement” that in April forced King Gyanendra to hand back rule to the House of Representatives: the people still want change but lack a guiding light to lead them.
Last weekend’s fuel price fiasco — the government abruptly hiked prices of subsidised transport and cooking fuels on Friday sparking widespread tyre burning and vandalism that effectively shut Kathmandu on Saturday and Sunday — revealed one of the movement’s major problems: disunity among the members of the alliance of seven mainstream parties (SPA) that joined hands one year ago to oust Gyanendra.
The monarch had fired his handpicked prime minister on Feb 1, 2005, blaming him for failing to beat back a Maoist insurgency that in a decade turned the countryside of this mostly rural South Asian nation into a place of fear. Tens of thousands of villagers abandoned their homes for the safety of heavily guarded towns but many others were caught in the crossfire between rebels and security forces and today account for most of the roughly 14,000 Nepalese killed since 1996.
Civil society was the first to organise protests against royal rule; only months later did the main political parties — bitter rivals since the first “people’s movement” in 1990 restored multi-party democracy — unite. And in November they finally accepted repeated entreaties from Maoist leaders to cooperate in a bid to unseat the king, signing the first of many agreements.
“In the beginning people were over-confident, they thought there would be serious talks. The parties and Maoists had signed the 12-point agreement, the prime minister had a ‘live connection’ to (Maoist leader) Prachanda and there was unity to fight autocracy,” says civil society leader Padma Ratna Tuladhar. SPA and Maoist leaders agreed that their ultimate goal was to establish a constituent assembly that would represent all the hitherto excluded groups in this hugely diverse nation and draft a new constitution that would decide the fate of the monarchy. But they did not agree on how long the restored House would work before being replaced by the assembly.
Heading the new government is Prime Minister Girija Koirala, whose Nepali Congress party holds the majority of seats in the restored parliament. Koirala told journalists recently that he had instructed Minister for Industry, Commerce and Supply Hridayesh Tripathi, general secretary of the Nepal Sadbhawana Party, to consult thoroughly with all parties before deciding on any fuel price changes.
Tripathi told journalists that he had made a deal with the Finance Ministry (headed by Ram Sharan Mahat of the breakaway Nepali Congress Democratic party) that would insulate poor Nepalese from any price hikes but that the finance ministry had not honoured the pact. Facing continued destruction and disruption, the government revoked the increases on Sunday and established a committee to examine fuel prices.
Tuladhar told IPS that since parliament had been rejuvenated, “The smaller parties wanted to work together but the prime minister and the major parties wanted to keep the power to decide.”
At first, all the SPA members were invigorated by the energy of the people’s movement, which in the end drew businessmen and women, civil servants and housewives alongside political activists and students onto streets across the nation in the hundreds of thousands, said Member of Parliament Bijaya Subba.
“We felt united but that feeling is now evaporating,” he told IPS. “For example, we still haven’t named a vice-chancellor for Tribhuvan University because every party leader thinks ‘I must put my cadre in that position’,” Subba added on Tuesday.
Quarrels within the SPA also delayed the setting up of the interim constitution drafting committee, which was originally flayed by activists for not including women. Now, more than double its original size, the group has again stalled while it waits for direction from the political parties, chairman Laxman Prasad Aryal told journalists last week.
Such infighting only confirms the predictions of many Nepalese disenchanted by various ruling parties’ failures during the 1990s that if given a second chance, this generation of political leaders would disappoint again. But the biggest risk is that the now calm gulf of suspicion that lies between the SPA and Maoists will become rough and drown the peace process, which appears to be floundering over disarmament.
“They may fail at any time,” said Tuladhar, who was an observer at the first two sets of peace talks between the two sides in recent months. “They don’t have any mechanism to follow up their decisions — they just sign these agreements.”
“Civil society has already expressed its resentment against the SPA for failing to implement the people’s agenda. We don’t see any hint that it will fulfil the peoples’ aspirations — the uncertainty is so clear,” added the activist.
He repeated the rumour now circulating in Kathmandu that if the government does not show progress towards forming a constituent assembly, a “people’s movement 3” could sweep it from power.—Dawn/IPS News Service
