Watching the tables turn in Nepali politics is one of our few pleasures these days and last week we got lucky. The sight of PK Dahal shooting himself in the foot was priceless and provided much needed comic relief to an exhausted nation.

Last we heard, the Maoists were threatening mass uprisings and the end of the world should the CA polls be delayed, so seeing Supremo try to weasel out of his own demands and plead for a postponement was as astonishing as it was amusing. Dahal's surprising admission that support for the party has collapsed was possibly his first truthful public statement ever, marking a refreshing change from rhetoric and deception that we'd like to see more of.

Historically, communists have always been good at denying reality, proven by the fact it took the comrades this long to figure out what everyone else has known for months: their version of 'Support Us or Else' democracy is about to be massively rejected by the people they claim to be liberating.

If you ask the Hand, the party's first mistake was adopting a violent, totalitarian, bankrupt ideology, but even that isn't what dooms them now. Since few in the isolated districts have a clue about world trends, Nepal is one of the few countries on earth where they could get away with such nonsense. Though this may be slowly changing (a valley villager recently told me he'd heard even China is run by kangresis nowadays) the Maoists have exploited this ignorance with remarkable success.

It is their second big mistake they are paying for now. By not changing their violent ways after signing the peace agreement the Maoists exposed an abiding contempt for the people's aspirations that has left everyone feeling betrayed. The initial relief brought on by the end of conflict was so great that many were willing to overlook Maoist war-crimes if only they started behaving like responsible, civilised democrats. Noone expected them to continue waging war on a government they were a part of and it came as a rude shock when violent extortion and kidnapping actually increased after the Maoists entered parliament.

By the time the YCL were attacking district offices and beating whoever got in their way the people realised they'd been tricked yet again.

Ideologues always fall into the same trap of intolerance and insisting they have all the answers, which not only makes them look foolish in the long run but leads directly to their downfall. Those who have been pushed around by arrogant party cadre will take their revenge when they can, and the polls offer a golden opportunity.

Whatever one's political beliefs, certain natural laws are bound to prevail. In the real world impunity does not exist, the law of action/reaction is inevitable, and sins end up being paid for one way or another. Democrats understand this to the degree it keeps them in line so they can win the next election, whereas totalitarians tend towards the 'action/crush-reaction' approach that includes banning elections and jailing opponents. As history is witness, such defiance of natural law never lasts long.

Though a Maoist change of heart now would be too little too late and seen as highly suspect, the least we can hope for is the leadership realizes their coercive ways have backfired and start behaving themselves. If it took them this long to figure out crime doesn't pay so be it, but we fear they may have learned all the wrong lessons from their brief fling with democracy and will fall back ever harder on the only strategy they know.

The people, meanwhile, have learned enough from recent experience to know who can be trusted (nobody, of course, but some less than others) and those who would trick and threaten them will soon pay the price.

If and when the results are ever in, we can look forward to fault being piled on all the usual suspects (Royalists, Feudalists, Foreign Hands etc.) but everyone knows the Maoists have no one to blame for their fall from the heights but themselves.