Behind all this--bare, obvious and assiduously ignored--are the ponderously shifting realities and imperatives of power. Never concealed, but widely neglected, was the simple truth that the Maoist engagement with democracy is tactical, not ideological--and could not be otherwise.
Nepal's Constituent Assembly elections, held on April 10, 2008, are yet to produce a final result, with counting for the Proportional Representation seats still to be completed, but there is little doubt, in a world of winners and losers, that the Maoists have emerged as unambiguous victors. Parties that have traditionally been wedded to democratic and constitutional politics in Nepal--and their vacillating international backers, including India--are unquestionable losers, as are those who had thrown in their lot with the monarchy.
Of the 240 seats determined by the First Past the Post (FPTP) system the Maoists had secured 120, just shy of a simple majority, with one result yet to be declared at the time of thisassessment. The Nepali Congress (NC), with 37 seats, the Communist Party of Nepal--Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), with 33, and the MadhesiPeople's Rights Forum of Nepal (MPRFN), with a surprise 29, lagged far behind. The once-powerful royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) was unable to secure even a single seat.
The Maoist 'lead', however, will shrink dramatically with the results of the Proportional Representation (PR) vote are finally tallied--something of an irony, since it was the Maoists who were most strongly insistent on the PR system, believing that they would fare better here, rather than under a purely FPTP vote. 335 seats in the 601 seat Constituent Assembly, which is to re-writeNepal's constitution over the coming 30 months, are defined by the PR vote, while the remaining 26 representatives are to be nominated by thecabinet. With just over 9.7 million votes counted, out of the estimated 10.6 million votes cast, the Maoists account for just over 30.4 per cent of the present PR tally. [The NC follows with 21.45 per cent; the CPN-UML with 20.75 per cent; but the MPRFN, which did rather well with about 12 per cent of seats in the FPTP tally, with just 5.68 per cent.] By the time the vote settles, and thecabinet nominees are defined, the CPN-M can be expected to end up with a final tally of around 230 seats--if the nominated seats are allocated on a proportional basis, or a few more, if the Maoists corner alion's share. They will, however, fall far short of the majority that they would need to railroad the Constitutional process according to their will.
The relative absence of overt violence during the elections, and the divided outcome, has given rise to many sanguine expectations onNepal's future. Some pundits in India have articulated the hope that India's own rampaging Maoists will draw lessons from the'Nepal experience' and join the democratic process (the Indian Maoists are certainly drawing lessons from their Nepalese comrades--but not this one). An overwhelming make-believe among commentators and international observers appears to be that the worst is now over, and Nepal is now firmly fixed on a trajectory of gradual--even if, possibly, slow--recovery and reconstruction, with the nightmare of the'people's war' left irrevocably behind.
What has been engineered in Nepal through the electoral process, however, is unambiguously a partial'seizure of power'. This seizure is no less a reality because it has not been effectively resisted by democratic forces. Nor, indeed, is the Maoist ideology any the less totalitarian because power is secured through a manipulation of democratic processes and institutions. The state may not have manifestly been captured through the'barrel of the gun', but it has certainly been secured under the shadow of the gun. This is borne out by the wave of violence and intimidation that had preceded the elections, creating what the EuropeanUnion's election observers described as "a general atmosphere of fear and intimidation" under which the polls were eventually conducted. Domestic observers, including the Nepal Election Observation Committee (NEOC) and the Nepal Election Monitoring Alliance (NEMA), who had the deepest penetration, with thousands of observers positioned across the country, noted that the Maoists had systematically resorted to "threats, intimidation and violence to terrorise voters and political rivals."
More significantly, the Maoist leadership had, in the run-up to the elections, clearly and repeatedly stated that the election outcome would be rejected if the outcome did not favour their party, with Baburam Bhattarai, theCPN-M's chief ideologue threatening a 'new revolution', and to 'capture thestate' in 'not… more than ten minutes". Ominously, Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda, the Chairman of the CPN-M, had spoken of an undefined "new method" to "capture the Constituent Assembly through elections" in February 2008. The effect of Maoist tactics was, no doubt, compounded by widespread disillusionment with the mainstream parties--but the eventual outcome certainly reflects a quantum secured through strong-arm measures across the country.
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The divided electoral outcome will of course, constrain the Maoists from their graver excesses, even as their relative strength in the Assembly will tempt them to encourage or coerce'cooperation' with their agenda. Many have hoped that the Maoist commitment to pluralism and parliamentary democracy is now real, and eventually will be total; others believe that the inherent dynamic of this system will soon make theCPN-M 'just another party', vulnerable to the endemic corruption and ineptitude that has afflictedNepal's other political formations.
However, the Maoists will find it impractical, if not impossible, to entirely renege on their ideological agenda--even if we are to believe that their commitment will be sufficiently diluted by the lures of the many vices of the parliamentary system. It can, of course, be hoped that the Maoist-led regime that will eventually be installed at Kathmandu, will have the sagacity to reject the excesses of Stalinist Russia, of the Communist Party of China under Mao and the'Gang of Four', or of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. It is, however, difficult to imagine how it can carry its declared ideological agenda of national transformation forward without drastic attacks against those who currently control power, influence and wealth within thecountry's long-stratified and stagnant order.
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Crucially, the radical imperative is not only ideological, it is structural. Nepal ranks among the poorest countries of the world, with a per capita income of just USD 260 per annum, and 42 per cent of the population below the poverty line. Poor connectivity afflicts much of the country, with isolated and dispersed populations in the hill areas largely unconnected by roads. A large proportion of the cultivable land and of the rural population is engaged in subsistence agriculture. GDP growth has tended to lag behind population growth--with a consequent decline in per capita incomes, and a rising population in poverty. Worse, Nepal has one of the most rapid rates of population growth in the region, adding 11.25 million to its year 2000 population of 24.43 million by 2020, to realize a 46 per cent augmentation at 35.68 million (the current population is already estimated to have exceeded 29.5 million). This will push up population densities from 166 in 2000 to 242 in 2020, creating unbearable burdens on thecountry's resources, which are already stretched to a limit.
The pressures on any regime at Kathmandu will, consequently, be acute, and on the Maoists, exceptionally so. While theparty's leadership now speaks of "10-15 years" to "reorganize the country", those who are denied the benefits of power within the party, the cadre who have been promised a Republican Utopia after the dismantling of the monarchy, and the larger populations who fail to secure at least some economic relief from a party that claims to have waged a'people's war'--and killed thousands--in their name, will have limited patience. The problems created by multiple demands of autonomy, as well as the limited (though enormously improved) representation to some ethnic groups in the CA (and in the newgovernment), will also create a significant conflict potential. With the strident Terai groupings securing a substantial representation in the CA (the two principal groupings have a combined total of 38 seats in the FPTP count, and 8.4 per cent in the PR vote, at the time of writing), there will be an inclination to vigorously push their own extreme autonomy agenda forward--something which will certainly be a thorn in the Maoist flesh.
The integration of the Maoist 'people's army' with the Nepal Army, a necessary tactical objective and cherished goal for the Maoists, and a measure that has already been agreed to on principal by the Seven Party Alliance (SPA), is another source of potential friction. The Army leadership has expressed opposition to a politicised Force; the Maoists will never be secure without an ideologically committed Army. The imperatives of strategy and of the current distribution of power fairly clearly define the natural inclinations that will prevail.
The cumulative thrust of these tactical and structural factors is that the temptation toannounce grand schemes of 'social engineering' will be inevitable and overwhelming. However, pushing such an agenda forward will be difficult, if at all possible, for the Maoists, within the framework of the present distribution of seats within the CA and whatever the contours are of the new coalitiongovernment. A united opposition from the other parties could exercise an overriding veto on Maoist schemes, and, given the history of the fractious democratic polity in the country, spoilers are certainly expected to play a disruptive, if not defining, role.
In any event, fulfilling their promises to their cadres and to the people of Nepal at large is not an immediate or realistic option either under the emergent framework of governance, or, indeed, the demographic and resource profile of the country. Ironically, the real choice that confronts the Maoists today is to be spectacular failures as democrats, or to be spectacular failures as Stalinists or radical Maoists. With their engagement with democracy destined to yield rapid failures in the implementation of long-held promises, the temptation to totalitarianism--barely held in abeyance--will become overwhelming.
The world will do well not, too easily or too quickly, to forget that the party now ascendant in Kathmandu is still designated a foreign terrorist organisation by the US Department of State, and that it has not, in a single statement, diluted its ideological commitment to its radical Maoist ideology, or renounced the option of a future resort to political violence.
Ajai Sahni is Editor, SAIR; Executive Director, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal
