Dahal-Nepal deal?

Amresh Kumar Singh, former Nepali Congress lawmaker, has claimed that caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned from his post after striking an informal deal with Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal. Singh has also claimed that he was the sole witness to the deal and he was disclosing it after Dahal failed to honor it. That neither Nepal nor Dahal has so far publicly responded to Singh´s claim only gives credence to it. We all know that Singh enjoys a great deal of access to both the leaders, and his involvement in the political and peace process is well known. Though he is not a member of the Constituent Assembly, he was not only present at the CA hall but also heavily involved in last-minute political negotiations on May 28 that led to the extension of the CA term, literally minutes before it would have expired.



Prime Minister Nepal and Maoist Chairman Dahal must come clean on this so-called deal. Did it happen? Did it not happen? Prime Minister Nepal told this newspaper in an interview on the day he resigned that he indeed had a dinner meeting with Dahal a few days before his resignation. He said that he did not see any flexibility in the Maoist chairman and he was resigning to pave the way for the formation of a consensus government. But Singh tells an entirely different story. And the nitty-gritty of the purported negotiations and understanding, provided they did take place, is very interesting in that it could have broken the protracted political stalemate. Singh has claimed that there was an understanding even on the number of PLA combatants to be integrated into the security forces, and the two leaders had also agreed on the number of federal states to be formed. Another key part of the deal was formation of a national consensus government led by Dahal.



All this sounds too good to be true, but again, all this should happen to break the environment of mistrust among the political parties and put politics back on track so that the constitution is written in the next eleven months and the peace process completed well before that. We wish to warn the political parties that the current exercise aimed at forming a majority government is not just against the interest of the country but it´s also an inherently unsustainable path. Formation of a majority government based on one or another alliance among such and such political parties may salve the ego of some leaders but it´s not going to solve the problem of this country and get us anywhere. The best option, and a still achievable one if the Maoists are sincere about it, is a comprehensive agreement among the political parties, followed by a national consensus government. We still hope for it, and still root for it.

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