abbreviated press communiquà©
24 September 2007. A World to Win News Service. Warning that “the country is now at the frontier of a big revolutionary possibility and an awful accident”, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has left the government. In a reversal of policy, it announced a programme of mass street protests to “disrupt all ongoing election plans”, namely the Constituent Assembly initially to be held last June and now scheduled for 22 November.
In April 2006 a mass upsurge forced the king to bring back the parliament he had suspended. A seize-fire was declared in the ten-year people’s war that the CPN(M) had been leading. In November of that year, the party signed a 12-point Comprehensive Political Agreement with the seven parliamentary parties to form an interim government and hold elections to a Constituent Assembly to decide the country’s future form of government, including the fate of the monarchy. The party agreed that its People’s Liberation Army would be stationed in camps and their weapons placed under storage, both under UN supervision. CPN(M) entered parliament in early 2007. In April, four party members began serving as ministers in the cabinet of Prime Minister G. P. Koirala.
During this period, reactionary forces in the Terai plains region along the Indian border have been trying to build opposition to the CPN(M), with the support of the US and Indian governments. The Terai is home to about half of Nepal’s population, including people of various ethnicities, and its flourishing agriculture makes it crucial to the country’s economy.
The pro-imperialist, Brussels-based International Crisis Group describes this movement as offering “hope to diehard royalists and Hindu fundamentalists, including some from across the border, who see it as a chance to disrupt the peace process” by directing violence against the Maoists. (Nepal’s Troubled Tarai Region, Asia Report no. 136, July 2007) Forces claiming to represent the region’s Madhesi people denounced the CPN(M) for agreeing to a draft interim constitution that fails to fulfil the party’s promises of proportional representation in the national government and regional autonomy. In the most notorious incident, a mob attacked Maoist party members and supporters in the town of Gaur last March, killing 27 people. The American ambassador and Indian political figures all but applauded.
At the same time, conditions for the People’s Liberation Army fighters in the camps have also remained deplorable, with serious shortages of food and lack of decent shelter, despite numerous CPN(M) protests that the promises made by the government and the UN were being violated.
Now the situation in Nepal has reached a major turning point. The CPN(M) put forward 22 demands on the Koirala government, chief among them that parliament abolish the monarchy immediately, without waiting for the Constituent Assembly, and that elections to the CA be proportional to ensure proper representation for the country’s oppressed nationalities and others. The party took the position that no “real election” can be held without the previous abolition of the monarchy. Koirala responded that although he was in favour of ending the monarchy, there was no question of doing so before the convening the CA or altering the election plans.
On 18 September, the CPN(M) ministers resigned >from the government. At a mass rally held in Kathmandu later that day, CPN(M) leader Baburam Bhattarai, declared, “We will struggle for the purpose of having a real election, not this hypocritical drama.” “We will not accept the code of conduct announced by the election commission and we will disrupt all ongoing election plans,” he told the cheering crowd. “We will launch peaceful protests, but we have the right to counter those who try to suppress our peaceful programme.”
The CPN(M) put out a schedule for the “first phase” of an agitation campaign. It began with a “funeral procession for the monarchy” on 18 September, door-door campaigning 19-21 September and rallies and other campaigns starting 22 September. The Maoist-led Nepal Transport Workers Union called a strike 23 September to protest police arrests and harassment of drivers, setting up burning barricades on a major motorway and stopping bus and truck traffic elsewhere.
From 29-September-3 October, according to Nepali press reports, the CPN(M) will expose corrupt people in power and those responsible for atrocities committed against the April 2006 mass movement. On 30 September, there are to be gherao (sit-in blockades) at all District Administration Offices across the country. They have also announced a bandh (general strike and shutdown) 4-6 October, which would impede the nomination of candidates for the Constituent Assembly by 5 October.
This change in policy was decided at the CPN(M)’s Fifth Expanded Central Committee meeting held 3-8 August. The 2,174 party members who participated in the meeting ranked from Central Committee members to leaders of district committees, People’s Liberation Army branches, mass organizations and others. It was held in an industrial area in the capital. The central document was the proposal “Unite to make a new ideological advance and a new revolutionary movement” submitted by Party Chairman Comrade Prachanda.
The post-meeting press communiquà© signed by Chairman Prachanda explains, “There are three important sections in the document. Important ideological and political questions have been discussed in the first part. In the second part, the past movement and peace-negotiation has been reviewed. And in the third, light has been shed on the forthcoming tactic and the party plan.
“In the context of discussing ‘Some fundamental theoretical questions’ emphasis has been given upon the question of distinguishing the difference between the Marxist and opportunist outlook mainly on compromise, reform and revolution, and revolutionaries are instructed to remain resolute in MLM and Prachanda Path by way of struggling against right capitulationism, centrist vacillationism and ‘left’ adventurism. In the present backdrop of negotiations and peaceful development of revolution, the question in which the revolutionaries should specially prioritise ideological struggle is against the rightist tendency of ‘enjoying the status quo, conceiving of compromise and reform as everything and refusing to propel the revolution forward’ has been mentioned in the document. Likewise, it has been mentioned in the document that the struggle against the centrist opportunism that surfaces in different forms in which one always falls prey to vacillation between right and wrong, talks of revolution but practices right reformism and shows sense of disappointment, frustration and escape must not be undervalued. Also, the document has cautioned the revolutionaries to remain cautious towards the danger of ‘left’ phrase-mongering and adventurism that ‘Without having concrete analysis of the concrete situation subjectively opposes all kinds of compromises’.”
In the section on “Strategy and tactics of revolution”, “it has been clarified in the document that the party, going ahead with flexible tactic and firm strategy of democratic revolution, has synthesized a slogan of all-party conference, interim government and constituent assembly election as a political tactic while arriving at the historic second national conference accomplished in 2001 and the same with modification has been carried on till now from the Chunwang Meeting held in 2005. Likewise, in relation to tactical slogan of democratic republic, quoting the decision of Chunwang meeting the document says, ‘Party has regarded the democratic republic neither in the form of bourgeois parliamentarian republic nor in the form of the new democratic republic. With an extensive restructuring of the state power, this republic will play a role of transitional multiparty republic as to resolve the problems related to class, nation, region and sex.'”
This concept of a “transitional multiparty republic” that is neither a bourgeois parliamentarian republic nor a new democratic republic” has been a basic theoretical pillar of the party’s actions over the last several years.
In the following section “assessing the peace negotiations and the events following it, the CPN (Maoist), which had not incorporated itself in the old parliamentary mainstream, but had, preserving the achievements of ten years of people’s war, participated in a transitional state of compromise to institutionalise through constituent assembly the new type of democratic republic but now it has been concluded that the major parliamentarian parties leading the government, going against the spirit of 12-point understanding, have destroyed the basis of unity with the CPN (Maoist). In particular, ‘Although it had been said that army would be confined at barracks and PLA at the cantonments as to make the interim state a neutral one as far as possible and all of the decisions to run the state would be taken up in consensus, the theoretical, political and moral basis for the CPN(Maoist) to stay in government is getting to an end because the state in the present transitional period has been tried to run as the state of feudal, bureaucrat and comprador bourgeois’ has been the important conclusion of the resolution. So cautioning seriously the forces that lead the interim government the proposal says, ‘The CPN (Maoist) will have no alternative to go to movement by quitting the government, if it is not guaranteed to ensure running of the interim government in accordance with the spirit of the agreement, bring an end to terror and regressive feudal conspiracy taking place against the constituent assembly election by declaring republic, take up actions against the criminals involved in a series of killings in Madhesh, publicize the state of disappeared citizens, impartially distribute relief to the families of martyrs, push forward the process of scientific land reform according to the spirit of the interim constitution, take up effective steps to stop killings, conspiracies and terror against the CPN (Maoist) and treat the PLA respectfully.'”
Regarding the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the CPN(M)’s policies since then, the communiquà© sums up that “the party tactic from the 12-point understanding to the participation in the interim government was correct and politically advantageous; however, in the resolution serious self-criticism has also been made on behalf of the party for some mistakes and weaknesses committed in this course.” Among others, it enumerates the party’s problems in the “coordination between compromise and struggle” after the murder of the Maoists in the Madhesi region, and failing “to “inform the masses” of the party’s strenuous but ultimately unsuccessful efforts in negotiations to get the seven-party alliance to accept “a federal state system and proportional elections”, which “provided an opportunity for the reactionaries and opportunists to launch a campaign against the party by spreading confusion that Maoists left their agenda on Madhesh.”
In its conclusions, the meeting document warns, “a situation of triangular contradiction among feudal royalist forces, status quo-ist bourgeois parliamentarian forces and revolutionary democratic forces exists and all of them are trying to hold sway of their own.” The situation is one of “a very fluid and serious revolutionary crisis”
It is likely that in the coming weeks and months, the class struggle will continue to intensify in Nepal. The enemies of the revolution in Nepal and their foreign backers have already given a glimpse of their willingness to use both political and violent methods in their efforts to consolidate the reactionary order in the face of this “serious revolutionary crisis” and wipe out any traces of the ten-year people’s war. No doubt this tumultuous situation will bring into sharper focus the question of what kind of state and what type of system Nepal needs, and the means for doing so.
(For the full press communiquà© in Nepali and English, see www.cpnm.org)
