Prachanda's Politics On Rough Track?

In Nepali politics, if there is any politician who is facing big crisis, it is perhaps CPN-Maoist Centre chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. After being kicked out of power, Prachanda is tackling unanticipated challenges from within and outside the party. It is a coincidence that Prachanda’s political fortune is on a downward spiral at a time when the transitional justice to victims of a decade-long Maoist insurgency, which Prachanda himself spearheaded, is heading to a logical conclusion. The former rebel leader, struggling to catch the last political straw, has become the victim of his own nemesis – a series of his strategic missteps marked by over smartness and sheer naivety. His moves to check the political descent are equally flawed and short-sighted.

With just 32 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), the Maoist leader can hardly pose a serious challenge to the ruling alliance of Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML. The two big parties have tacitly agreed to clip the wings of smaller parties by revisiting constitutional and existing legal provisions. They see the fringe parties as the sources of political instability. In order to create a force that can put a curb on any arbitrary acts of the government, Prachanda is now frantically pushing the agenda of unity with the likeminded communist forces. This bid is also directed towards thwarting a threat to his leadership within the party. 

Leadership transfer 

Some Maoist leaders, considered minnows, have asked Prachanda to transfer leadership mantle to another, a proposal that looked implausible just a few years back. Prachanda has been at the helm for 35 years continuously. Those who fell out with Prachanda had left the party, paving the way for him to run the show without any serious opponents. On Thursday, Prachanda requested CPN-Unified Socialist chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal and general secretary of Nepal Communist Party Netra Bikram Chanda Biplav to forge unity with the Maoist Centre. But both Nepal and Biplav have ruled out the possibility of unity at the moment. Prachanda even offered the leadership of Parliamentary Party and then the premiership to Nepal when the situation becomes favourable for this. However, Nepal refused to rise to the bait. Nepal told Prachanda that it was not wise to create a situation whereby they unite parties in haste and repent in leisure. 

The unification between the UML and Maoist Centre some years back had bitten the dust. And the Unified Socialist, a UML splinter, is aware of the tragic consequences of the artificial unity of the two big left parties. As a proverb goes – a scalded dog dreads cold water -, Nepal’s party is unwilling to repeat the past foible. But Prachanda is apparently refusing to learn the lesson from the disintegration of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) created through the merger of UML and Maoist Centre. From the beginning, the NCP trudged down the rocky road. The unification was merely guided by the desires of its two leaders – KP Sharma Oli and Prachanda – to share the premiership on a rotation basis. The two parties did not conduct extensive discussions on party’s ideology, programmes and organisational structures. As the motive behind the unification was parochial interest, it collapsed before the unity process came to fruition.  

Some lawyers accompanied Prachanda during his parley with Nepal. He had proposed forming a 42-member parliamentary party combining the lawmakers from two parties with a legal basis. But all his exhortations failed to lure Nepal into his strategic gambit. Prachanda’s repeated pleas for unification with the Unified Socialist contradicted his one-upmanship that defined his political behaviour until he was ousted from power. He had ditched Unified Socialist while he decided to ally with the UML twice. He continued to change his main allies to secure the highest executive post. 

He didn’t bother to consult Nepal while terminating the alliance with the NC. Left out in the cold, the Unified Socialist even stared at a possible split amidst the dirty game of the power politics. After he was pushed onto the margins of national politics, Prachanda is plugging away at efforts to realise unification with the left parties. He has even offered premiership to Nepal. What an unrealistic yet ludicrous bargaining! As if the premiership is inside his pocket and he can hand it to Nepal on a platter!

Dissenting voice 

Some political observers claim that Prachanda is floating the idea of unity with other communist parties to subdue the dissenting voice raised inside the party. In the recent Standing Committee meeting, deputy general secretary Janardan Sharma registered his disagreements in which he suggested three options to change the party leadership. He insisted that Prachanda could nominate a person of his choice to lead the party or hand over the leadership to third generation leaders or choose the leadership through voting in the convention. Sharma, who was himself dragged into controversies when he was finance minister, also accused Prachanda of using the state powers to sabotage him and spread rumours that he was trying to split the party. Due to his growing conflicts with Prachanda, Sharma has been shorn of responsibilities in the party.

Media reports claimed that Prachanda was shocked as Sharma mustered the courage against his leadership. His leadership was not challenged even by former senior Maoist leaders like Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, Mohan Baidhya Kiran and Ram Bahadur Thapa 'Badal' when they were together with Prachanda in the party. However, Prachanda has adopted a conciliatory tone and agreed to discuss Sharma's proposals in the party's central committee meeting. The current situation does not favour Prachanda to push Sharma into the corner. As he is now passing through the worst time of his political career, it is interesting to see how he will ride out the political storm that is brewing in and outside the party.

(The author is Deputy Executive Editor of this daily.)