Dangerous game

Opposition protest plans

With power, comes responsibility—and, apparently, plenty of compulsions. If we parse recent statements of Maoist Chairman and the leader of the 30-party opposition alliance Pushpa Kamal Dahal, even the ones delivered the same day, contradictions galore. Addressing a meeting of party central committee at Koteshwar on Tuesday, he instructed Maoist lawmakers to prepare themselves to resign from the CA en masse. But on the same day, he also told leaders of four smaller Maoist parties that his party was in no position to accept the demand of hard-line CPN-Maoist to boycott the CA. Instead, said the sexagenarian, his party would try to find solutions from within the assembly.

In the nearly ten years of his entry into mainstream politics, Dahal has become somewhat of an expert in Orwellian doublespeak. He tends to promise everything to everybody. To give him the benefit of doubt, his leadership of the opposition alliance—comprising of political parties of different persuasions and often-competing vested interests— calls for a delicate balancing act. It is in fact hard to imagine anyone else in the opposition camp successfully managing such a diverse group. Yet that does not mean Dahal has no personal responsibility and that he can say and do pretty much anything he likes.

Recent overtures towards Baidya Maoists, who don't even accept the sanctity of the sovereign CA, is clearly meant to put pressure on the ruling coalition. But Dahal must understand very well that courting Baidya at this juncture will mean the party's virtual isolation by the international community, most notably India which expended so much political capital to break the Maoist party in order to isolate the stridently anti-Indian Baidya. And not when Baburam Bhattarai is making pilgrimages to Delhi to secure its support for opposition protests. But it is also hard to see how New Delhi or any other member of international community can support their program of disruptive strikes starting March 19. Interestingly, the opposition has announced its protests when the ruling coalition has unconditionally prorogued voting in the CA, with the one and only aim of building an atmosphere of trust with the opposition. It is hard to see what Prime Minister Sushil Koirala can—short of a complete surrender of constitution-making duties to the (minority) opposition—do at this juncture to bring the opposition on board.

Since we can't foresee how the planned strikes will play out, the opposition will be embarking on a risky strategy. Their last 'Nepal banda' on the eve of the original January 22 constitution deadline had met with resistance from common people across the country. After two-and-a-half decades of frequent banda and chakkajam, the public simply has no appetite for any protest that disrupts their daily lives. Sooner or later, the opposition will realize that coming back to the talks table is its one and only option. But we fear this realization might dawn a little too late. As the public antipathy towards the opposition parties, and chiefly against the Maoists, increases—as it is bound to if violence is employed to enforce their strikes—what little bargaining power they still have might also evaporate. A far wiser option for the opposition parties would be to accept people's mandate and cooperate in constitution-making. If they feel hard done by, people will do them justice in the next elections. Surely, the only true test of the strength of a democratic party is the number of votes it gets in periodic elections—not the number of apparatchiks it can mobilize to disrupt public life.