BHANUBHAKTA NIRAULA |
The picture showed CA member from Okhaldhunga, Balkrishna Dhungel, stepping off a plane in Salleri this week together with Energy Minister, Post Bahadur Bogati. Both are profusely garlanded with khadas, and on hand to receive them is the CDO of Solukhumbu and other top cops.
There is only one thing wrong with that picture: Dhungel was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Ujjan Shrestha in Okhaldhunga in 1998. The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court on appeal in 2010 even though Dhungel had already been elected to the CA by then, and has since been moving around freely enjoying the close protection of the prime minister himself.
Current State Minister for Energy, Surya Man Dong, and former Information Minister Agni Sapkota (both CA members) are charged with the abduction and murder in 2005 of Arjun Lama. Those implicated in the execution of Lamjung teacher and human rights campaigner, Muktinath Adhikari, are walking around freely.
Baburam Bhattarai has a reputation for being honest and upright, but by coddling criminal cronies he has sullied what little respect he had. It is quite clear that Dhungel is too hot a potato to handle even for the second man in the Maoist party, who also happens to be the prime minister.
Acts like these destroy the little trust Nepal's other political parties and the international community have in the Maoist party. The erstwhile revolutionaries have now amply proven that the war was not about the liberation of the downtrodden, it wasn't about ending feudalism, and it had nothing to do with winning Nepal's ethnic minorities their rights. It has now all boiled down to amassing wealth and power while the going is good. And anyone who points out the venal and corrupt actions of the Maoist party is immediately accused of being "the people's enemy", a deadly euphemism the Maoists use to justify physical elimination.
Besides threats of violence and a return to war, the other reason for the lack of trust is that one can never rely on their words because what they say is so self-contradictory and outrageous. Far from showing that they are committed to peaceful multi-party politics, their public statements and speeches reek of intimidation, blackmail and threats of violence. The latest was Prime Minister Bhattarai's statement at the anniversary of the death of lifelong champion of democracy, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, last weekend. There he once more blackmailed the nation with "50,000 more deaths" if the other parties, civil society and the media oppose his draft of a totalitarian constitution.
Words like that and deeds like the conspiratorial way the Maoists recently tried to get the chief of the Nepal Army to put forth a "flexible" proposal that would directly benefit his in-laws in the ranks, have shattered the trust that existed between the Maoists and the other parties. It was a matter of national pride that we at last had a Janjati army chief, that has now been squandered. The chief's only line of defence is that the Rana-Shah generals also favoured their own kind. The Maoist-inspired proposal would have essentially established a parallel army of ex-guerrillas within the Nepal Army, defeating the purpose of the whole integration exercise.
The end result is that things are now even more badly deadlocked on the peace and constitution project, and one wonders if that has been the Maoist intention all along. 'Revisionism' and 'reformism' are bad words in the Maoist lexicon, but what we need now is a re-visioned and reform-minded Maoist party.
The only future for the Maoists is to come out as a demonstrably democratic party that is transparent and honest, does not have to rely on threats and violence anymore, a party that means what it says and doesn't protect criminals. The sooner Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Baburam Bhattarai see that, the better it will be for them. And for us.