By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu : Nepal’s Maoist party, which last year won a historic election as well as the prime ministerial race, Saturday said it feared “dirty horse-trading” by its opponents with money flowing to buy their way to power in the upcoming poll.
Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda, who cancelled his engagement to attend the 2,553rd birth anniversary of Gautam Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, to instead address the first national rally of people still searching for relatives missing during the armed insurrection.
“The old parties have once again started their dirty old game of buying and selling people,” the caretaker prime minister, who resigned Monday, said.
Prachanda alleged that a political party leader had met him during the day to warn him that “crores (of rupees) were being spent” to ensure numerical support in the new race to choose a new prime minister.
“My friends are being bought,” the unnamed political leader allegedly told Prachanda.
The former revolutionary also alleged that the “dirty game of buying and selling lawmakers” was being played on the orders of the parties, “foreign masters”, by which he meant India and the US.
He also claimed that his resignation, which came as a bolt from the blue Monday after a prolonged fight to fire the chief of the army, had acted as a “missile” against the foreign powers, their brokers and the forces in Nepal who were ready to surrender themselves to these powers.
Prachanda said he had resigned to ensure civilian supremacy over the army. The parties who opposed the removal of the army chief wanted deposed king Gyanendra to return and were inviting civil war and a state of emergency, he warned.
The Maoists’ ties with India became strained during the fight over the army chief. New Delhi had asked the Nepal government not to tamper with the army’s chain of command.
Consequently, when President Ram Baran Yadav reinstated the fired general in a controversial move, causing the fall of the Maoist government, the former rebels blamed India for the debacle.
The politburo of the party, the second-highest decision-making body, also alleged Saturday that Indian intervention had increased in Nepal.