KIRAN PANDAY

Although Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai appeared relaxed at a meeting of Kathmandu-based editors on Wednesday, he was hard pressed to explain comments he made in a revolutionary website last week in which he threatened a "final assault against the enemy to complete the revolution".

Asked to explain his statement in the interview with the World People's Resistance Movement in which he predicted "another round of armed clashes" on Thursday, Bhattarai admitted "contradictory statements from our leaders is one of our weaknesses".

At the meeting with chief editors Bhattarai didn't just appear moderate, but back-pedalled furiously on his party line. "Some of our leaders have a dogmatic ideology, but that is a peripheral group," he said. "We will soon be announcing our party line. We want to assure you that this will be a peaceful movement."

Bhattarai was asked about the declaration of 13 ethnically-demarcated 'federal republics', and admitted that it was not going according to the direction of the party leadership, and that it was only a 'symbolic' gesture to give an 'identity' to various ethnic groups.

Bhattarai made a distinction between 'nationalities' and 'ethnicities' and said the federal units were not a parallel government, but provinces named after ethnicities. "But we are aware that the debate is not going according to our plan," he admitted, "it is going the wrong way."

Bhattarai also came across as accommodating on a compromise with the other parties. "Some kind of common resolution from parliament or a gesture from the president would remove the need for protests," he said. "We want to bring closure to the issue of the president's move in a manner that would be acceptable to all."

All this was in stark contrast to Bhattarai's own recent public speeches and his 26 October WPRM interview, excerpts from which follow:

WPRM: Why did the Maoist party enter the peace process and attempt to change society through Constituent Assembly elections?
Baburam Bhattarai: Our understanding was that after abolishing the monarchy and establishing a bourgeois democratic republic, the proletarian party would take the initiative and launch forward the struggle towards the New Democratic Revolution. We knew the bourgeois forces, after the abolition of the monarchy, would try to resist, and our main contradiction then would be with the bourgeois democratic parties. A new field of struggle would start.

Now we are preparing for the final stage of the completion of the New Democratic Revolution. In a few months, maybe there will be some intervention from the imperialist and expansionist forces. We may again be forced to have another round of armed clashes. We have decided to again focus on the basic masses of the people both in urban and rural areas. In the decisive stage of confrontation with the reactionary forces we could again combine our bases in the rural areas and our support in the urban areas for a final assault against the enemy to complete the revolution.

Can you explain how the UCPN(M) understands the nature of the state in this transitional period? Can the New Democratic Revolution be completed through the holding of an election?
A sort of flux has been created, it has not been stabilised. Within this nature of the state, we think it will be easier for the revolutionary forces to intervene and further destabilise the state, putting pressure on it from outside the state which can be smashed to make a New Democratic state.

What we are talking about is not organising elections within the bourgeois state, we are talking about after the revolution in a New Democratic or socialistic framework, where there will be certain constitutional provisions whereby the reactionaries, imperialists and criminal forces will not be allowed to participate. This concept of competition is only a general concept, the actual mode of that competition we have still to work out.

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