Senior NC leader Bal Bahadur Rai passed away on Sunday.

This commentary from senior NC leader Bal Bahadur Rai was published in Himal Khabarpatrika 30 June-16 July. It was dictated from his hospital bed ten days before he died on Sunday.

All the leaders of all the parties acknowledge that there is no alternative to consensus politics. Yet they can’t get themselves to rise above personal and party interests. They are prisoners of their own leadership ambitions.

The biggest party in the CA, the Maoists, instead of cooperating, is playing dishonest games. It has repeatedly failed to honour its past commitments, and muddied the political waters to allow all kinds of extremist and reactionary groups to take root. It was always necessary to get the Maoists on board for the management of their fighters, return of property and the dissolution of the YCL, and it still is. But past agreements have been just for show. There is little chance the Maoists can get into government without fulfilling these commitments.

The Maoists can’t hide the fact that all levels of their party hierarchy are either abetting or doing nothing to stop their warlike involvement in kidnapping for ransom, murders, extortion, beatings, and threats. At one time, we also waged an armed struggle for democracy, but we never made the people suffer. We fought the enemy, whereas the Maoists fought against the people. In the name of revolution, they killed and terrorised the people. This isn’t politics, it’s banditry. Mao Zedong himself said don’t even take a needle from the people, but the party that is waging havoc in Mao’s name in Nepal has forgotten all that.

The Maoist idea of 14 provinces is not viable and will lead to the fragmentation of the Nepali nation. There should never be more than six provinces and under no circumstance should they be demarcated along ethnic lines. The Maoists only used the ethnic card to help recruitment during the war. Just look at Gopal Kirati. The Maoists refused to give him an important portfolio when they were in power. They said he couldn’t handle it, so they fabricated a new Ministry of Culture to make Gopal a token minister. But even an old man like me served 19 times as caretaker prime minister under successive Nepali Congress governments.

The Maoist promise to give marginalised ethnic groups, Madhesis, women and Dalits rights is just eyewash. And even if they wanted to give them rights, the Maoists would bungle it: just look at the way they have handled the ethnic state councils.

To be sure, Nepal’s historically marginalised groups need to be liberated, they have to be given equal rights and opportunities. Nepal is hugely diverse and the groups need to be represented proportionately. But in doing that we shouldn’t disturb the traditional harmony of our diversity, and not threaten the country’s unity.

The path we have to take now should allow any Nepali, be they Rais, Limbus, Tamangs, Magars, Gurungs, Yadavs or Biswokarmas, the chance to be prime minister. Pushpa Kamal Dahal promises to give the Limbus a Limbuwan, the Rais a Khambuwan, the Magars a Magarat, the Tharus a Tharuhat, the Gurungs a Tamuwan, but will he ever propose to give the prime ministership to Srijabegu Limbu, Gopal Kirati, Arasi Chaudhary, Rambahadur Thapa Magar, or Deb Gurung?