By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : The chief of once-dreaded Maoists Friday warned that Nepal could see “Benazir Bhutto-like” political assassinations in the run up to the April 10 constituent assembly elections.
“The next two to three months are not going to be easy,” Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), told journalists in the capital from where he makes his poll debut in April.
“There could be conspiracies to kill. Such indications are rising.”
The 58-year-old, who had remained underground for over 12 years and carried a price on his head, referred to the tossing of a bomb Monday in the capital where his party and its allies kicked off their campaign for the twice-deferred polls.
“The bomb landed just 70 metres away from my car,” Prachanda said.
The Maoist supremo said conspiracies were afoot to assassinate politicians. He also claimed he had heard rumours about killers assembling in the country.
“Such killings are taking place regularly in Madhes,” he said, referring to Nepal’s troubled Terai region where violence has been rife since last year.
“There are also killings in Kathmandu. Top politicians can get killed.”
Prachanda, whose party started a war on Nepal’s two-century-old dynasty of kings in 1996 and finally forced parliament to declare the kingdom a republic last year, said while his party was focussed on the polls, challenges remained.
Royalists and feudal aristocrats, “whose existence would be endangered” by the election that seeks to abolish monarchy, as well as Hindu fundamentalists from India were endeavouring to sabotage the polls, he said.
However, the Maoist chief said that “one or two Benazirs” would not be able to wreck the April election.
“Criminals can kill some people but they will not be able to sabotage the election.”
Nepal, he said, had more to fear from a Bangladesh-like scenario, in which the government posed as a civil one but was propped up by the army and began to repress the political parties.
“But it’s not easy to turn Nepal into Bangladesh,” he said.
Prachanda, who is also the supreme commander of the guerrilla People’s Liberation Army, said though Nepal’s people had accepted his military face – unlike King Gyanendra, who was stripped of his position as chief of the Nepal Army – he would fight the election in his political persona.
Besides a constituency in the capital, the Maoist chief said he would also contest from a seat in western Nepal in either Rolpa or Rukum districts, considered the cradle of the Maoist insurgency.
“We see no reason to lose since all the current agendas are ours,” Prachanda said. “We haven’t even thought of defeat.”