This is not the first time that they have painted a rosy picture of their closed-door talks, only to followed it up with bickering and the blame-game a few days later.
Take for instance the last round of talks: Just five days before the Dashain holidays began officially, top leaders of the three major parties met at the prime ministerial residence at Baluwatar and vowed to expedite talks immediately with the aim of reaching a deal, possibly before Dashain. But there were no formal talks before the festival and informal talks failed to produce any result.
What the public was treated to again was more of the blame-game: No other than Prime Minister Bhattarai himself used electronic media interviews during Dashain to land the blame on the NC and UML for lack of any progress.
Party leaders may blame each other for one reason or other and take comfort in a belief that the public will buy their side of the story. But that’s just wishful thinking. Nepalis are too smart to be fooled all the time and they know that none of the parties has been sincere in the peace process, that they are guided by their own narrow interests and priorities.
The public will, therefore, hold them collectively responsible for failure. If it’s a question of who should be blamed the most, the public is clear about that too: The Maoist party will have to take a disproportionate share of blame. Agreed, the other parties have at times dragged their feet, but if the Maoists had truly wanted to resolve the issue of their combatants, the peace process would have been completed long ago.
And the peace process will not be completed in future either if the Maoists don’t want to move in that direction. Sweet talk and repeated commitments notwithstanding, the Maoist leadership is yet to prove its seriousness through concrete action. Take, for instance, the issue of returning property seized by Maoist cadres. This was supposed to be a confidence-building measure that would, once implemented in earnest, win the trust of the opposition NC and UML.
Prime Minister Bhattarai, after his election to that top post, had announced the immediate return of seized property, and this was included in the government’s relief program as well. But not a singe piece of private or public land has been returned in the last one and half months. It’s time the Maoists demonstrated sincerity and the other parties matched that with moves of their own so that the constitution-writing process begins apace. The public wants results, not promises.
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