After the heady excitement of last year’s pro-democracy uprising in Nepal that forced King Gyanendra to restore parliament, Nepal’s eight-party coalition has fallen apart with the Maoists quitting the government recently. The move did not come as a surprise, since the ex-guerrillas had been warning of just this for months. But it does put the fate of elections for the constituent assembly, scheduled for November 22, in real doubt.

The rebels joined forces with an alliance of seven parliamentary parties against King Gyanendra which led to the people power protests in April 2006. Since then, the Maoists have joined an interim parliament, helped write a transitional constitution, and six months ago were allotted five portfolios in the new cabinet.

Tough path
But the transition has not been smooth. The former guerrillas have found it difficult to go from the jungles to parliament. There have been problems in the alliance and the Maoist leaders who supported the peace process were being heavily criticised by their rank and file for having sold out on the revolution.

Recently, the Maoist ministers resigned en masse and the party announced a nationwide protest to put pressure on Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to agree to their two main demands: declaration of a republic before elections and introduction of a system of proportional representation. The Maoists fear that the king will destabilise the country before elections and want him out of the way. They also fear that they won’t fare all that well at the polls and want proportional representation so that they would be guaranteed atleast a few seats.

By quitting the government, the Maoists have tried to kill three birds with one stone. They have stolen the thunder back from ethnic groups that have recently become even more radical than they are; they have appeased the hardliners within their own party who were critical of Maoist ministers for not doing anything while in government; and they’ve managed to put alliance partners who are ahead of them in election preparations on the spot. The Maoists now obviously recognise the advantage of being seen as an opposition party during campaigning so they can tap anti-incumbency sentiment.

More worrying to the Maoist leadership is disgruntlement within its own ranks. Party chairman Prachanda came under intense criticism at the party plenum last month from former commanders who blamed him for everything from living in luxury to being too soft on the alliance partners.

Withdrawing from the government was probably the minimum demand of the radicals. One standby option for the Maoists could be provoking street protests in the coming month so that elections would not be possible in November. In an internal review, the Maoists have concluded that they may not win more than 15 percent of the seats in a constituent assembly, and they would like very much to postpone voting. Their thinking must be that putting off elections to April would allow them to prepare better and improve their chances. But even this is doubtful.

In the past 18 months of the ceasefire, instead of trying to behave like a mainstream party the Maoists have been high-handed and have deployed their young cadre to threaten businesses and political critics.

Peace process
The UN has expressed concern about the Maoists quitting the government, saying this would jeopardise the peace process. The hope now is that behind-the-scenes negotiations currently underway will produce an agreement that the first meeting of the constituent assembly after elections will declare Nepal a republic. It remains to be seen whether the Maoists will agree to this, and if they do elections may still be possible. Otherwise postponement is likely. Nepal’s peace process is not in jeopardy, and the Maoists are not about to go back to war.

- IPS (The writer is editor of the Nepali Times news paper.)