Nepal: Interview with Prachanda on forging closer ties with Indian and Chinese regimes

[One highlight of this interview is Prachanda’s plans to forge an agreement with the reactionary Indian regime and the Chinese imperialists  with the goals of developing closer economic ties and  satisfying  China’s and India’s “security concerns.”  As part of this strategy, Prachanda is making a trip to New Delhi on November 15 to resolve the UCPN(Maoist)’s disputes with Indiia over borders and unequal treaties, in order to lessen and eventually remove Indian opposition to the UCPNM.

Prachanda also reiterates his full support for integration of an undisclosed number of the 19,000 members of the People’s Liberation Army (who have been housed in camps for four years) into the 90,000 strong US and Indian backed Nepal Army. This is the same army that the PLA was fighting against in order to liberate 80% of Nepal’s countryside as of 2006, the year that Prachanda and the UCPNM leadership called off the people’s war in order to become an electoral party in search of a peaceful reformist path to “socialism.”—Frontlines ed]

Posted on eKantipur.com on November 11, 2010

“We want to turn over a new leaf in our relationship with India”

Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)  – UCPN(M) –  has had a difficult relationship with India and other political parties in Nepal after the fall of Maoist-led government in May 2009.  The party’s  several attempts to regain power have been scuttled by its widening trust gap with various political forces.  As a consequence the peace process has been stalled and Nepal has been without a functioning government for over four months. Against this backdrop, Prachanda ( Pushpa Kamal Dahal),  Chairman of the UCPN (M),  recently visited China where he proposed to the Chinese leadership a tripartite  agreement between Nepal, China, and India.  Prachanda  spoke to Akhilesh Upadhyay and Sudheer Sharma on Saturday morning about his visit, his party’s upcoming plenum, its relationship with India, the peace process and his fall from grace.

You and your party men have been to China frequently.  Some reading it as tilting towards China.

It is not as it appears in the media.  At an ideological level, we are naturally interested in studying developments in China.  But my visits have been circumstantial.  The first time I went to the Olympics.  The second time I was there to study Chinese development. This time I was there to attend the Shanghai Expo.  Which is not just about China for the expo is, in a sense, a world expo.

It is true that while in China I had meetings with Chinese leaders.  But upon my return I divulged the content of those meetings.  Chinese leaders have always underlined the need to ensure peace and development (in Nepal).  As the largest party, they have advised us to improve ties with India.  There is no truth in the rumours about our party’s preference of China over India.

Nepal: On the eve of UCPNM CC Plenum, Bhattarai’s meeting with party cadres blocked

UCPNM Vice-Chairman Baburam Bhattarai

MyRepublica, October 29, 2010

 

BIRATNAGAR: In apparent manifestation of brewing conflict among the top party leadership, the UCPN (Maoist) Kochila State Committee has barred party Vice-chairman Dr Baburam Bhattarai from holding meetings with party cadres in its area.

Kochila State Committee In-charge Haribol Gajurel issued verbal directives to party cadres not to hold a meeting on Thursday shortly after party leaders and cadres under the state committee were asked to attend a Jaycees function on Saturday at Tankisinuwari, Morang.

The move comes after Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Vice-chairman Mohan Baidya objected to such meetings, saying Dr Bhattarai was trying to solicit support to consolidate his ´hold´ at the party plenum. Leaders close to the two senior leaders said party leaders cannot hold meetings on individual basis.

Chairman Dahal and Vice-chairmen Bhattarai and Baidya presented three separate political papers on the party´s future course, at the central committee meeting in August. As unanimity on any of the papers was elusive, the central committee decided to table three papers at the plenum to finalize the party´s course. 

Nepal: Important UCPN(Maoist) Meeting to Discuss Separate Papers

UCPN(Maoist) Vice Chairman Mohan Baidya {"Kiran")

Republica, October 14, 2010

Kathmandu: The Maoists have decided to take separate political documents  prepared by the top three leaders — Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Vice chairmen Mohan Baidya and Dr. Baburam Bhattarai — to the party plenum, scheduled to begin November 14 in Gorkha district, for debate and discussion. A meeting of the top office bearers took a decision to this effect recently.

The last central committee meeting of the party had decided that Chairman Dahal  would accomodate the views expressed in the separate documents prepared by Baidya and Bhattarai and prepare a new one for presentation at the plenum.  As per the decision, the vice-chairmen duo will present their documents at the plenum if they are not satisfied with Dahal’s new document.  “The leaders agreed to take the separate documents to the plenum as that would be more democratic,” said Maoist politburo member Narayqan Sharma.

In the past, party chairman Dahal mixed the lines floated by Baidya and Bhattarai, but both leaders have strongly pushed for their own line this time around and are against the “fusion of ideas”.

“The plenum will consider all the lines floated by the leaders.  The line that gets a majority will be the official line of the party, while the views that fall in minority will also be recorded in the  party’s history,” said Sharma, who is close to Baidya.

Leaders say the plenum, slated for November 14 in Gorkha, holds special significance as Baidya and Bhattarai  are preparing to challenge Dahal’s new document. “Both Baidya and Bhattarai are against diluting their views, and have so far rejected the idea of fusing them,” said a leader close to Bhattarai.

Nepal: 4 years after ending People’s War, Peace deal is stalled–Maoist party sharply divided

Between extremism and opportunism

Saroj Dahal in Himal Khabarpatrika, 17-31 August, 2010

The battle raging between Lalrakchyak monthly (which supports Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal) and the Samayabadha bimonthly (which supports Mohan Baidya) clearly points to mounting internal tension within the party. Though the comments seem to pit Dahal and Baidya against each other, there is another common target here: Vice Chairman Baburam Bhattarai. Factionist politics in the UCPN (Maoist) has led leaders to brand each other extremist, opportunist and rightist, while the country is held hostage to their infighting.

Leaders are still divided over whether to support the constituent assembly or to go for a revolution to establish a people’s republic. Bhattarai wants to pursue the first path as was decided in the 12-point understanding and so is criticised by the hardliners in the party for being rightist. Baidya sees the current change as meaningless and wants to revert to the extreme leftism of the past.

In between them is Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who swings between both lines, using the conflict between the two factions to his strategic advantage. A Central Committee member close to the Baidya group says that even though Dahal favours Baidya during decision making, he supports the ‘rightists’ while implementing policy.

Nepal Today: Maoist fighters left in political limbo; Parties ask UN for 4 month extension

Maoist ex-soldiers hand over equipment at the end of their guard duty at Dahaban Camp in a remote part of western Nepal

[A reader commented on this article: “The imperialist puppet masters in USA and EU and their puppet state regimes in Nepal and India seem to be doing a good job of keeping the fish (the PLA) out of the ocean (the revolutionary masses) in Nepal by peaceful cooptation since 2006.” The mood of the PLA ex-combatants in the camps interviewed in this article reflects their isolation from the masses.  The solution to this difficult situation is not integration into the reactionary Nepal Army (as the UCPN-M is demanding), but the re-establishment of the people’s war with the goal of new democracy and socialism.-ed]

By Subel Bhandari (AFP) – Sep 5, 2010

DAHABAN CAMP, Nepal — As a commander in Nepal’s Maoist army, Ram Lal Roka Magar led his soldiers in more than 50 battles against the state security forces.

But for the past four years, the 38-year-old father of two has been biding his time in a military cantonment in a remote part of western Nepal as he waits for the country’s warring politicians to decide his fate.

Magar is one of thousands of former fighters in the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) still living in UN-monitored cantonments set up across the country after the war ended in 2006.

The arrangement was intended as a temporary solution pending a merger of the PLA and the national army.

But it has dragged on because the Maoists, now the main opposition party, and their political rivals have been unable to reach agreement on the issue.

The former fighters are free to leave whenever they want, and thousands have drifted away in the intervening years, ditching their PLA uniforms to return home to their families.

Nepal: Maoists’ Pursuit of Coalition Politics Stalls again

Pushpa Kamal Dahal

Nepal PM race ends in fiasco, Maoists get thumbs-down

2010-07-21

Nepal’s third prime ministerial election in two years ended in a fiasco Wednesday night with the Maoists receiving a humiliating snub as lawmakers flayed the contenders and refused to give any of them a leg-up to the top job.

It was an especially humiliating moment for Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, the revolutionary who had fathered a 10-year insurrection and won a thumping victory in 2008, leading the first Maoist government of Nepal.

The 55-year-old could only watch in stunned disbelief as the chairman of Nepal’s parliament, Subhash Nembang, announced that Prachanda had won only 242 votes, falling considerably short of the 301 needed to get simple majority in the 601-seat house.

Nepalese PM struck secret deal with Prachanda before resigning

 

Outgoing Nepali PM Madhav Kumar Nepal (L) and presumptive Incoming PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal (R).

Republica, 7/5/2010 

Kathmandu, Jul 5 (ANI): Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar struck a secret agreement with Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN-M) chairman Prachanda on the basic principles of the new constitution and the peace process, before his resignation.

According to Nepali Congress party’s former lawmaker Amresh Kumar Singh, who has been involved in numerous informal talks with the Maoists since the peace process began, the Nepalese PM resigned three days after he struck a verbal deal with Prachanda on June 27.

In his interview with myrepublica.com after his resignation on June 30, Madhav Kumar Nepal had stated that he talked to Prachanda three days ago, but did not disclose anything about the deal.

According to Singh, it was agreed that Prachanda would welcome the Prime Minister’s resignation within 30 minutes of its coming and both parties would immediately begin works on peace process and the new democratic constitution. After this, they had agreed to form a Maoist-led national consensus government, Xinhua reports.

In the secret talks, both leaders had agreed to integrate 5,000 UCPN-M combatants into the national security forces-Nepal Army, Civilian Police and Armed Police Forces-and give a golden handshake with attractive economic packages to the rest.