In a recent interview on Nepal Television, veteran kangresi Pradip Giri used an apt cricket analogy to describe the political games being played out in Kathmandu. He said it was like a captain who keeps on batting even though he has been bowled out several times, so the referee gets fed up and decides to bat himself.

When the referee sent the captain off on October Fourth, he was fed up with the lack of team spirit on both sides and was forced to do something drastic. But by stepping up to the crease to take on both teams, the referee changed the rules of the game. It just wasn't cricket anymore.
This is a king who staked all on his unconventional move. He is telling the crowd, I'll just bat until these two teams sort out their problems so we can resume with the match. The teams don't trust him, but the spectators in the stands are willing to go along with that for a while. Soon, the people will start getting restless. King Gyanendra's predicament is that he needs to be hands-on to get things back on track, but he can't be seen to be. The predicament of the political parties is that they can\'t be seen to be opposed to peace, but they want a share of the pie.

By announcing the ceasefire, the king and his royal team of administrators have bought some time for themselves. There are those in the cabinet who are quietly going about making necessary structural changes in ministries that were rotten to the core: corrupted by the politicisation, interference and indifference of the past decade. These moves are invisible, but vital to improving future service delivery. Other ministers are too busy playing games of intrigue and giving speeches.

But for the peace process to be made irreversible, much more needs to be done and urgently. The royal apointees need to show that they have a government that cares, that they are different from the bungling parties and that they are working to get things moving again. So far, the people have seen scant signs of such resolve.
Reports in this issue of our paper from Jumla, Surkhet, Salyan, Rukum and Rolpa show that in the heartland of the insurgency, the government has lost the chance to wrest back the initiative. It is showing the same callous disregard for local welfare, the same cavalier attitude towards the disenfranchised. Meanwhile, the Maoists are holding open meetings in which they do mass calisthenics with SLRs and RPGs. You could say, well, at least they are not using those guns. But the Maoist message is clear.

To be sure, seven years of conflict cannot be set right overnight. We can't be impatient while the behind-the-scenes negotiations between the king's emissary and the Maoist leadership tries to get over years of bad blood and fix the rules for future bargaining. But we can't help noticing that while the Maoists are proactive and have kept their cadre busy, there is virtually no tangible presence of government even after the ceasefire. What are we waiting for?

By now we should have had some indication about what we had to do, where we wanted to go, and how to get there. Instead, we have a cacophony of contradictory clamour from the cabinet, with political parties yowling away outside. There are a few things everyone, including the Maoists, could now agree on-a shared commitment to a democratic, pluralistic and inclusive Nepal so that we put in place the socio-political prerequisites to development. If everyone plays by the rules, we should be able to agree on a mechanism to make that happen. That way, the referee could go back to being a referee again.