It was a hot sunny day, the air was still that I met the young man, a Moaist party representative. He was sitting patiently, supervising, keeping an eye on the polling procedure underway in Bhadrak Jail in Kathmandu’s constituency No 1. Nepal had allowed prisoners to vote for the proportional representation seats. In Kathmandu’s central jail, about 700 men and women inmates cast their ballot. He was the only representative of a political party waiting at the polling station, where an electronic voting machine was used. As we smiled and chatted, he seemed assured of a victory.
A few days later, as the first reports of Maoist electoral gains began trickling in, we got a taste of Maoist revelry. With a group of friends, we were having dinner in an open air restaurant in Kathmandu’s Thamel area. A group of raucous men sat behind us drinking and shouting in a constant refrain, “We are the kings, Maobadis are the kings”. They broke glasses, spilled alcohol, thumped chairs. The management hovered around and watched and ultimately quietly talked to the most sober in the group to lead the others away.
Two days later, again in Thamel, we had yet another taste of Maoist revelry. At about 4 pm a few young men, waving the CPN-Maoist flag, drove up on motorcycles into one of Thamel’s narrow one-way traffic lanes. They blocked traffic, stopped all movement and were soon joined by others on motorbikes, waving the party flag. When a young passerby, also on a motorbike, tried to go past the makeshift barricade, he was physically stopped, dragged off his bike and roundly slapped by two men with the Moaist flag. Shopkeepers watched silently from windows and pedestrians quietly moved away from the scene.
Not all, however, were caught up in the rivalry. The owner of a travel service in Kathmandu’s upmarket Darbar Marg is livid at the fact that international observers have given a verdict of ‘free and fair elections’.
“Were these really free and fair?” he asks scornfully. He still feels fear, revulsion and most of all horror as he remembers the time that men owing affiliation to the Maoists had barged in on him, asking for ‘protection money’.
“They are from the jungles, people who know only how to fight and how to extort money. They have hardly 10 educated people in their fold.”
The Democracy and Election Alliance Nepal (DEAN), in one of its pre-election reports had noted that “In particular Young Communist League (YCL) and the Communist Party of Nepal — Maoists (CPN-M) cadres have been the perpetrators,…”
In its report, the European Union observation mission, observed: “The lack of law and order and poor security environment contributed to a general atmosphere of fear and intimidation and at times undermined the right to campaign freely”.
According to other international observers, election day itself, though largely peaceful, saw the turnout of great numbers of under-age voters and voters without proper ID papers.
“The Maoists created the insurgency. Now if they rule, at least they won’t be fighting. If they lost, perhaps, they would have gone back to the jungles and the insurgency would have been underway all over,” Gunaraj Luitel, a senior editor with the Kantipur Group, Nepal’s largest publication group, said.
Babita Basnet, president of Sancharika Samuha, a media monitoring network of women journalists, put forth another perspective. “I liked the Maoists for they made women visible. They had large numbers of women in their fold. They also had the maximum number of women in the interim Parliament.”
When days before the elections I met Hisila Yami, minister for infrastructure in the interim government and wife of Maoist second in command Baburam Bhattarai, she explained the gender friendly agenda of Moaist very simply: “We are from the grassroots level. So we understand the problems at that level. Without solving things at the grassroots level, we cannot hope for progress.”
The Maoists are also credited with putting in place the constitutional stipulation of having 33 per cent women candidates contesting the constituent assembly elections. Altogether 23 women, have been elected in direct elections. This is the first time so many women have won elections in Nepal’s history and 19 are of CPN Maoist.
Most enduring, however, is the memory of the day I departed from Kathmandu. I stuck up a conversation with an airport staffer. “You have had the elections and there will be a new Nepal,” I volunteered. He stared at me for some time and then asked a little incredulously, “You really believe that? The Maoists will change things?”
“Why not?” I responded. He thought over it for some time, then shrugged and resignedly said “Maybe”. And then it was time for him to go. “Ok, Namaste,” he said and started walking away.
A few steps and he turned round looking at me with a half-smile he shook his head and shouted: “No, nothing will change. They will be the new kings,” and walked briskly away towards the exit.
(The writer was an election observer in Nepal)
