A meeting of the party Standing Committee on Tuesday took a decision to this effect. [break]
“We will take strong measures against the tendency of arbitrarily speaking against the party’s declared policies and mudslinging against the leadership,” Maoist spokesman Dinanath Sharma told reporters.
The party decision comes at a time when ideological differences among the top leaders have increased and intra-party tensions heightened with leaders publicly attacking each other in popular media and in their own publications.
The party is vertically split into three factions -- led by Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and vice chairmen Mohan Baidya and Dr Baburam Bhattarai who represent three different ideological lines.
Sharma acknowledged that the party has witnessed a surge in outpourings in the media against established policies and in lashing out at each other.
Just last Monday, in his interview with a Nepali weekly, Maoist leader Devendra Poudel stated that he was against the “deification and glorification of the party leadership as infallible”, adding that he has always pushed for “democratic centralism” in the party. Poudel, who is regarded close to Bhattarai, was lacerating Dahal, the “all-powerful” chairman of the Maoist party.
Reflecting the growing factionalism in the party, market is also inundated with publications, representing these different ideological lines and attacking the dissenting views. There are over two dozen such publications which are said to be patronized by the top leaders who can’t stand each other.
The last issue of the Lalrakshyak, which is close to Dahal, even demanded physical action against Bhattarai. “Running a ministry effectively and running a government are different things,” the magazine wrote attacking Bhattarai.
The magazine, edited by Deputy in-charge of Maoist Newa State, also attacked Baidya: “Now the Maoist leadership (read Dahal) has to make all these deviationists naked and force them to stand in the streets. Now it is not the time to accommodate all such deviations in the name of party unity; we should launch an intra-party struggle to differentiate between the true revolutionary and rightist deviationists and settle the matter from the battleground of struggle.”
The Rato Jhilko (Red Spark), which is edited by Bhattarai’s daughter Manushi, is focused on promoting the ideological line of her father than launching direct attacks on Dahal and Baidya. But the quarterly magazine dubs Baidya’s views as “left adventurism” and Dahal as a leader without any firm ideological ground.
There are more publications in favor of Baidya than Dahal and Bhattarai. The Communist Outlook and Samayabaddha, both Nepali magazines, promote the views of Baidya while denouncing those held by Dahal and Bhattarai. The magazine dubs Dahal’s views as “centrist” and Bhattarai’s as “rightist”.
Going by the principle of democratic centralism in a communist party, leaders hold the right to disagree with the establishment in the party meetings and can speak out their mind, but once decisions are taken, they cannot publicly speak against them.
“But the factionalism in the Maoist party has grown so much that leaders are freely attacking their rival factions in the media,” says a senior Maoist leader.
The meeting also decided to set up a disciplinary department to investigate the violations against the party’s code of conduct as well as speaking against the party’s formal decisions. The party had formulated such committees in the past too.
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