With a week to go for the government's bullet-or-ballot ultimatum to the Maoists, there is a sense of suspended animation. No one wants to do anything because no one wants to make a mistake. Given how we have blundered in the past 14 years, that may be just as well. Our political forces have shown a chronic inability to act even in enlightened self-interest, let alone in the national interest.

One puzzling failure is political myopia that prevents politicians from figuring out who the real enemy is. Going by the people they have butchered over the past eight years, the villagers they have hounded, the school children they have abducted, the ordinary farmers and small businesses they have punished by blocking highways, the underground comrades are behaving as if their real enemies are the people of Nepal. Isn't this supposed to be a 'people's war'? Aren't they supposed to be for the people and by the people? Then why are they punishing the people?

For its part, the monarchy is behaving as if its real enemy are the political parties, and not the revolutionary republicans at the gates. One of the most puzzling aspects of the post-October Fourth order is this baffling royal allergy towards politicians. True, some them are reprehensible, many were members of successive parliaments where they repeatedly displayed an absence of accountability that was breathtaking in scope. But they represent the people and democracy has this fabulous self-correcting mechanism to weed out crooks over time.

Even for the longevity of his own dynasty, the king needs a buffer between himself and those who want to dethrone him. Panchayat-style divide-and-rule, political musical chairs and machination may buy him time, but it will not lengthen the monarchy's life span.

Then there are the political parties still out on the streets whose leaders have a stubborn fixation with procedures. They will oppose every idea to resolve the crisis if they are not a part of it. They will not allow a solution unless they get credit. October Fourth may have been a mistake that needs to be fixed, but what of the mistakes they made over and over again after 1990? Who is going to fix those? The party leadership seems incapable of distinguishing who its real enemy is: the monarchy or the Maoists. Who has been killing, torturing, threatening and driving out their own party cadre from the grassroots?

Unless this political stalemate is broken, it will be a checkmate. And we can already hear the approaching wave.

Monocracy may be tempting but it is an absolute dead-end. Democracy may be messy, but it is a mess we know how to fix.