Two months down the line, Dahal seems less strong in his resolve and more reconciliatory toward rival factions in the party. This leaves room for serious concern that he might waver on his commitment to peace and constitution.
Dahal made two mistakes in the intervening period that have pushed him into the defensive.
First, he underestimated the Mohan Baidya faction’s strength in the party, and second, he made a strategic blunder in not winning Dr Baburam Bhattarai’s full confidence and support after having dumped Baidya.
Even if Dahal opted to bat for peace and constitution, which has been Bhattaratai’s political line all along, he was not willing to fully embrace the latter. And that was deliberate. Dahal didn’t want to see Bhattarai project himself as the legitimate leader of the “peace and constitution” line, which could eventually weaken his own position and bolster Bhattarai’s claim to leadership. At the same time, he also didn’t want to share power with Bhattarai in the party organization (one of the latter´s key demands since long) and was hell bent on maintaining his monopoly.
Dahal perhaps calculated that even if he didn’t embrace Bhattarai fully and didn’t share the party’s powers and privileges with him, the latter had no choice but to tag along with him since Baidya was so radically opposed to his political line.
This is where Dahal miscalculated and has been trumped.
Even if Dahal has changed his political line, Bhattarai is still far too suspicious of him. If Dahal could dump Baidya today, he could dump him tomorrow. Pitting one leader against another has become routine for Dahal, and Bhattarai wants to make sure this comes to an end now once and for all. Unless Dahal is willing to give Bhattarai a full share in party handling, there´s no way Bhattarai will hand him a blank check this time.
To bolster his bargaining position, Bhattarai has extended a hand to the Baidya faction for taking on Dahal’s monopoly over the handling of the party. Bhattarai and Baidya are now demanding power-sharing in the party and have even threatened to replace Dahal with Bhattarai as the party’s parliamentary party leader.
Dahal underestimated Bhattarai and Baidya’s joint strength in the party until recently. A couple of weeks ago, I asked a powerful standing committee member of the Maoist party and Dahal confidant about the chairman’s grip in the party. Here is what he told me: Chairman Dahal has the support of over 90 percent of combatants in the PLA; over 50 percent of members in the central committee and 120 lawmakers (out of 238) in the Constituent Assembly.
But the turn of events has proved this claim wrong at least in the case of the CA members. Three weeks ago 159 lawmakers belonging to the Bhattarai and Baidya factions submitted a written demand that all the ministers in the government belonging to the Maoist party be recalled and a new and more inclusive team of ministers sent into the cabinet. This show of strength by Baidya and Bhattarai has, according to party insiders, shaken Dahal’s confidence.
And he is now frantically recalibrating his strategies. As he must win the allegiance of either Bhattarai or Baidya to maintain his hold in the party, he seems to be weighing his options sensibly. On Saturday, Dahal sent his confidant Barsa Man Pun to meet Baidya camp linchpin Netra Bikram Chand. On Monday, he met Bhattarai.
Dahal sees Bhattarai as a potential future challenge to his leadership in the party. While he has political differences with Baidya, Dahal knows deep down that the former will never challenge his leadership. He doesn’t have the charisma or the ambition to do so. Baidya has only one wish— that Dahal would some day realize that the political line of peace and constitution betrays the revolutionary pledge, and would return to the radical fold to lead the revolution.
The future of the peace process now depends upon who Dahal joins hands with. If it’s Bhattarai and he can ignore Baidya (and that’s a big if), we can expect Dahal to make strides in the peace process. If it’s Baidya, things will be back to square one.
Any kind of compromise between Baidya and Dahal will imperil the peace process and constitution writing. The Baidya camp doesn’t want the peace process to be concluded before constitution writing and wants to keep the option of revolt open. Concluding the peace process will require compromise from both sides, and with the Baidya faction at the negotiating table, the Maoists and other parties are unlikely to strike a respectable deal. On constitution writing also, the Baidya faction’s demands are equally radical: They want to implement the current impractical 14-state map for a federal Nepal prescribed by the state restructuring committee of the Constituent Assembly and grant some ethnic groups special rights and right to self-determination within the federal setup.
More than its stance on specific issues the key problem with the Baidya faction is that it doesn’t feel it has any stake in the current political process. How do you negotiate with a group that doesn’t feel a stake in the continuation of the current arrangement?
There is a third possibility as well—though a remote one. Some how all the three factions within the Maoist party will patch up at least for now and reach a vague agreement that will not be overtly opposed to the peace process but not conducive to it either.
So where is the Maoist party headed? Dahal’s close aide told me that there was nothing to worry about. “The chairman will stay the course and expedite the stalled peace process and constitution writing once our central committee meeting is over,” he said. How I wish he is right!
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