Nepali Times

The discontent inside UCPN (Maoist) has now reached boiling point with the entire rank and file in ferment.

Three important positions in the party hierarchy that were decided at the Hetauda Congress earlier this year have been overridden: chairman, vice-chairman and general secretary. A de facto ‘headquarter’ has come into existence with power concentrated completely in the hands of Pushpa Kamal Dahal. This has, in turn, spread disquiet among Baburam Bhattarai, Narayan Kaji Shreshtha and their followers.

Before the party split, it was relatively easy for Dahal to balance Mohan Baidya and Bhattarai. But he lost this pivotal role after Baidya split off, and since then he has tried to regain power by using Narayan Kaji. With polls around the corner, the intra-party dispute has once again intensified. Dahal has neither succeeded to create a special post for Bhattarai, nor convince Narayan Kaji and this has kept the party hierarchy in limbo at a critical time.

Bhattarai came to air his disgruntlement when Dahal started giving more power to Narayan Kaji and an open war of words broke out between these two leaders during in-house meetings. Narayan Kaji had gone off on an ultra-nationalist tangent after Bhattarai’s visit to New Delhi last year as prime minister during which he signed the BIPPA agreement. Later, he wrote a note of dissent accusing Bhattarai of signing the agreement without consulting him when he was Foreign Minister at the time. Shrestha has since been flying the nationalism flag as his main election plank.

After the 7th extended meeting concluded in July 2013, Dahal indicated he was willing to hand over the leadership of the party to Bhattarai. But as the 7th congress approached he changed his mind and did not create any special post for the party number two. In other words, Dahal decided to treat Bhattarai as a political equal of Shreshta knowing fully well how much that would rile Bhattarai.

It was widely expected that a special post for Bhattarai would be created at the time of allocating party responsibilities. Post Bahadur Bogati and Krishna Bahadur Mahara were to be made vice-chairman and general secretary, respectively and Bhattarai was sanguine he would get a special post slightly elevated above Naryan Kaji.

When that did not happen, Bhattarai took it as a humiliation and an insult, but because of his personality did not express it publicly. Two months ago, when Dahal read out his plan to allocate responsibilities to leaders, the disquiet and discontent erupted into the open at a party meeting. A furious Bhattarai quit his post of vice-chairman, disturbing the party’s entire organisational superstructure. The extended meeting called to resolve the chaos ended up deciding to dismiss all posts, which did not solve the problem because it made everyone even angrier.

Until the party split, Baidya clung to his ultra-leftist tendency whereas Bhattarai invariably led the revisionist line. Dahal tried to balance them, and this balancing act put him in the middle making him play the pragmatic mediating role. Later, he strove to apply the same method while empowering Shrestha. Bhattarai had to resign to save face and to express his pique. But it didn’t solve the party’s leadership crisis, and in fact deepened it with widespread disgruntlement in the politburo.

After the dismissal of all posts, the UCPN(M) has inducted former office bearers, but ended the role of Shrestha and Bhattarai. In this, Shrestha has lost out, Bhattarai has at least safeguarded his interests and the public perception that he is not after positions, and Dahal has consolidated his hold on power.

But the biggest impact of all this intrigue and infighting is in the prolonged haggling over allocation of tickets for the November elections.