BIKRAM RAI

Everyone has to take a share of the blame for the futile deadend on 27 May, and for the last four years of dilly-dallying, wheeling-dealing, back-stabbing and give-and-take. Politicians confused the country's long-term interest with the short-term ambitions of egotistical party leaders. They confused genuine devolution of power away from Kathmandu with a disastrously unworkable ethnic division of the country. They engaged in ruthless brinkmanship right till the very end just so they could have the upper hand in elections in six months' time.

When he addressed the nation on Sunday night, Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai (above) spoke not as a head of government, not as a leader of all Nepalis, not as a statesman, but as a defensive, haughty party boss delivering his first campaign speech.

Lenin and Stalin carved the Soviet Union up into ethnic Soviet republics with a token nod to self-determination, but kept totalitarian power centred in the Kremlin. Can we expect any better from a party that keeps the portraits of Lenin and Stalin on the wall of its headquarter?

In the next six months we have to try to patch a perilously frayed social fabric and protect our pluralistic democracy during a polarised and volatile campaign for the next election.

http://nepalitimes.com/blogs/kundadixit/2012/05/28/racing-with-history/

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