This is not the first time Baburam Bhattarai has hurled barbs at party chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal. The feud between the top comrades has been ongoing for the past 20 years. Here is a sample:
1 A year before the insurgency started, in 1995, Bhattarai was stripped off the presidency of Samyukta Janamorcha. The party reasoned that it would be hard for Bhattarai to go underground if he got too comfortable with his post. But the real reason behind the demotion was because Dahal was jealous of his comrade’s growing popularity among rank and file. Four months later, he was forced to backtrack on this decision. This was the first time Dahal realised Bhattarai was eyeing party leadership.
2 Dahal’s faction have always claimed that they prepared the blueprint for guerrilla warfare, long before several parties united to form the CPN-Maoist. Bhattarai, on the other hand, has maintained that the party decided to opt for war only after he joined the ranks. Dahal wanted to begin the insurgency from Rukum-Rolpa, while Bhattarai was keen to strike in Gorkha because it was birthplace of the Shah dynasty and his home district. In the end, the party decided to begin hostilities from Rukum, Rolpa, Gorkha, and Sindhuli.
3 Soon afterwards, Bhattarai became the poster boy of the ‘people’s war’ in Nepal’s mainstream media. At the party’s fourth extensive meeting in Faridabad, India in 1999, it was proposed that the general secretary’s personality be projected into the public sphere. Initially, Bhattarai compared this move to Stalinist Soviet Union, but later broke down in front of everyone and admitted he had made a mistake. This was the only time Bhattarai cried in public. He then went onto publish a veiled attack on Dahal in an essay titled Let us learn from Marx. At a meeting a year later, Bhattarai was labelled an anarchist for spilling party secrets.
4 Dahal loyalists wanted to call their undertaking the ‘Prachanda Thought’ because they believed the armed struggle in Nepal was very unique in the history of communism. But Bhattarai said that it was too early for such labels. A compromise was reached and both sides settled on the name ‘Prachanda path’ at the party’s second national assembly in Bhatinda, Punjab in 2001.
5 In August 2004, during a Maoist central committee meeting at Phuntibang, Rolpa, Dahal proposed to centralise the party structure and the PLA to prepare for a counter-attack against state forces. Bhattarai disagreed and walked off from the meeting. An hour later, the two leaders talked alone and came to an understanding: all decisions were off for the time being.
6 Only two months after Phuntibang, the Maoists brought out a report called 14 instances of opportunism within the party and the Dahal faction told lower ranking cadre that Jit Bir (Bhattarai’s nom de guerre) was the most opportunistic. Four months later, it was decided that Bhattarai had acted against the spirit of communist revolution and he along with his wife and another supporter were punished.
RABINDRA MANANDHAR
At the historic meeting of September-October 2005 in Chunbang, Rolpa when the Maoists decided to join the peace process, Bhattarai sacrificed all efforts to make the party more democratic and submitted all authority to Dahal.
8 After the Maoist party’s landslide victory in the 2008 elections, Bhattarai wanted to become prime minister, but received little support from his comrades. Ultimately, Dahal got to lead the government. The Maoist chairman, however, had to resign in May 2009 after his unsuccessful attempt to oust the chief of Nepal Army. Dahal accused India of conspiring against him because it wanted to see the JNU graduate as PM. Naturally, Bhattarai was incensed and Dahal had no other option than to support his deputy to get himself out of the mess.
9 As negotiations for the next PM were underway, Bhattarai, Mohan Baidya, and Narayan Kaji Shrestha met at a private gathering and criticised Dahal’s approach. Soon after, the chairman called for a meeting at Palungtar and decided the party should head back to the jungle as Baidya proposed. Bhattarai submitted a note of dissent and four months later, Dahal backtracked on his decision.
10 In April 2011, Dahal gave the impression of supporting Bhattarai and even proposed that his deputy take on the reigns of Singha Darbar. Bhattarai finally became PM in August that year and it seemed like the two would finally let bygones be bygones. Even as Baidya and Co protested every decision taken by the Bhattarai government, Dahal stood by his side.
11 Once the Constituent Assembly was dissolved in May 2012, however, cracks began to reappear. Bhattarai blamed Dahal for the failure of the CA and censured him in public. The breakup in the Maoist party later that year, forced the two warring heads to stick together.
12 At the party’s general convention in Hetauda in February 2013, both Dahal and Bhattarai proposed a party-less government led by the chief justice. Bhattarai then resigned from his post as deputy chairman hoping Dahal would follow suit. Instead, the chairman stripped all senior leaders of their titles.
13 As the results of the November election began trickling in, the Maoists, sensing a humiliating defeat, cried foul and threatened to boycott parliament. A few days later, Bhattarai declared via Facebook that the party would accept the new mandate and insisted that the chairman follow democratic norms. The two comrades are once again at loggerheads, after Dahal filled the party’s PR list with his supporters and yes-men. In recent days, Bhattarai has regularly taken to social media to vent out his frustrations and rumours are swirling of yet another split.