By IANS
Kathmandu : Four months in the government have caused more discontent in Nepal’s Maoist party than a 10-year-old savage guerrilla war, with the rebel rank and file urging their leaders to quit the coalition cabinet and wage a war afresh, a demand that has been turned down for now.
As the once banned party’s first over-ground plenum began in the capital last week, after four years of secret meetings in remote stronghold villages, an overwhelming majority of the representatives are asking Maoist supremo Prachanda to pull out of the eight-party government of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and begin a new protest movement.
Nearly 2,500 Maoist leaders have assembled in the tightly guarded Balaju industrial area in the capital for the fifth plenum meeting that will end Tuesday.
Though the government provided security for the crucial meet, the guerrillas have pressed into service their own soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, who have been patrolling the grounds with arms.
Divided into more than 40 groups, the Maoist representatives have taken Prachanda and the top leaders to task for the party’s “poor performance” during their four months in government and asked for a new revolt to press the demand for a republic.
Though the Maoists signed a peace pact with Nepal’s major parties last year and agreed to participate in a crucial election which would leave it to the voters to decide if they wanted to scrap the 238-year-old institution of monarchy after King Gyanendra’s bid to seize power through a coup, most rebels now feel the Nov 22 poll would not be free and fair.
They are demanding the abolition of monarchy before the country goes to the polls, a demand that is being stiffly opposed by Koirala and his Nepali Congress party as well as the international community.
However, the Maoist top leadership said they would not quit the government before the election or break the ceasefire.
“We will not leave the government,” the new Maoist spokesman Barsha Man Pun, a former top chief of their guerrilla army known by his nom de guerre Ananta, told IANS. “There is also no question of breaking the ceasefire.”
The Maoist rank and file are also growingly critical of Koirala, who has often been taking unilateral decisions and has advocated retaining a ceremonial monarch.
In a surprise development, the Maoists, who during their “People’s War” had demanded the involvement of the UN as a precondition for holding negotiations with the government, are now turning upon the world body, accusing it of trying to sink their morale.
The criticism comes after a bitter disagreement between the Maoists and the UN over the verification of their guerrilla soldiers.
The UN has found a number of Maoist soldiers to be under-age and illegally recruited. However, instead of discharging them immediately, as the rebels had agreed, the Maoists are challenging the verification, which has resulted in the process coming to a standstill.
The discontent has also reached the makeshift camps where the guerrilla army has been confined since the signing of the peace accord.
Over 1,000 soldiers are said to have deserted the barracks with dissidents claiming that nearly 4,000 more are ready to leave with their arms and join a new armed struggle.
Though the Maoist insurgency ended last year, Nepal still remains volatile with nearly a dozen armed groups, including three bands of former Maoists, becoming active in the Terai plains in the south.
There are fears that the mushrooming groups can derail the Nov 22 election. They have already forced the government to defer the exercise from June due to the deteriorating security situation.