It's finally over, the excruciating Nepali Congress deathwatch.
Here was a party that could neither break nor unite. Its internecine squabbling held the country hostage for far too long, nearly taking the nation down with it.

Despite all that, we will reluctantly pen a political obituary for the Nepali Congress in this space. In the Nepali Times/ Nepalnews.com Internet poll last week, nearly 71 percent of the respondents said that the Nepali Congress should split and get it over with. As it breathed its last this week, the party seems to have at least respected the peoples' wish one last time.

Mainstream kangresi leaders are wont to blame the palace, the opposition, the Maoists, even "the foreign hand" for their party's predicament. Actually, the truth is much simpler: the Nepali Congress didn't need any outside enemies. Its enemies were within. It self-destructed from the selfishness, corruption, greed, envy, ambition, short-sightedness, narrow-mindedness, and paranoia of its leaders.

They repeatedly squandered the peoples' mandate in the last 12 years, they consistently put personal interest above the interests of the nation and the party. And more than any other political force, the Nepali Congress failed to respect the peoples' faith in democracy and freedom, and wasted the trust that Nepalis had placed in the party's workers at the grassroots.

And these leaders at the grassroots paid with their lives-they were systematically and savagely slaughtered by the Maoists, while their leaders in Kathmandu played their little games. The party faithful, seriously let down by the uncaring central leadership, still came to the Birendra Convention Centre this week. They didn't want a split, but were forced to take sides between Girija Prasad Koirala and Sher Bahadur Deuba in a duel that had nothing to do with the needs of their constituents.

And that is the ultimate tragedy: having to choose between two leaders singularly incapable of showing statesmanship, vision, resolve or any ability to see beyond their trivial parlour games. What an ignominious end to a party that once stood for freedom, social justice and democracy.