Mr Dahal seize the opportunity

Nepali Congress parliamentary party leader and the only Prime Ministerial candidate in the fray, Ram Chandra Poudel, has said his party was ready to accept Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal as the next prime minister if his party met NC´s demands. This may sound like just a reiteration of the NC´s past position by Poudel, but there is certainly something new in what he said. The NC´s official position so far has been this: We are open about the leadership question (regarding who should lead the consensus government), provided the Maoists implement their past commitments related to the peace process. It´s for the first time that any NC leader of Poudel´s stature has publicly said that the party would accept Pushpa Kamal Dahal as the next prime minister.



The onus now lies on Dahal. One of Dahal´s enduring suspicions since he quit the prime minister´s post a year ago has been that he might not get the job back even if he reached an agreement with the political parties. Now that the Nepali Congress has made an unambiguous, public pledge, Dahal should feel more assured and take the initiatives to implement his past commitments and reach new agreements on resolving PLA issue and writing of a democratic constitution.



But this time around agreements alone will not suffice, and Maoists must prove their intent through actions. Maoists and other parties signed several agreements in the past but none of them were implemented in earnest. The latest example being the three-point agreement reached between the Maoists, NC and the UML just before the extension of Constitution Assembly´s tenure. After the CA extension, the Maoists set Prime Minsiter Madhav Kumar Nepal´s resignation as a precondition for implementation of the agreement. But once the prime minister resigned, the Maoists have refused to discuss and implement the three-point agreement. More recently, Maoist Chairman Dahal has been taking of a need to reach a new agreement!



Dahal must be kidding when he asked for a new agreement. The mainstream parties don´t seem to have any appetite or patience for such an agreement with the Maoists. Since past agreements remain unimplemented despite repeated commitments by the Maoist leaders to do so, leaders from other parties argue that there is no point signing a new deal. They aren´t wrong. Maoist party and especially its Chairman Dahal must realize that the parties and international community are no longer in a position to take Maoist´s promises at face value. In Poudel´s offer, Dahal has an opportunity to prove his detractors wrong. We urge Dahal to seize the opportunity and implement past commitments, conclude the peace process and lead a national consensus government.

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