After over a year of king bashing, Nepali Times has begun to pay attention to the other threat to democracy ('The Seduction of Process', #323). Instead of write-ups by experts like Ajai Sahni, we'd been treated to week after week of CK Lal's 'bitterades' against the king and the army, and lured into believing in the mainstreaming-the-Maoists-through-safe-landing rhetoric.

When the Maoists have got everything they asked for, or the path to it cleared, surely we deserve peace. The hard truth is that this Peace Accord has not only legitimised the Maoists' violence, but glorified it. Their local cadres still go around committing atrocities while their leaders attend international summits decrying 'bourgeois democracy' and peddling their own brand of 'socialist democracy'.
With a 'new Nepal' on everyone's lips, one wonders who is 'mainstreaming' whom, and who needs a 'safe landing' from whom.

Satyajeet Nepali,
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