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Nepalese Maoists agree to abandon armed struggle and join government
In the wake of sustained mass protests in Nepal that forced King Gyanendra to step aside in late April, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)—CPN (M)—reached an agreement on June 16 to enter the interim government, currently headed by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. The decision is a measure of both the depth of the crisis of bourgeois rule in Nepal and the political bankruptcy of the CPN (M), which is to become the latest in a long line of guerrilla outfits to exchange their military uniforms and automatic rifles for business suits and parliamentary seats.
Koirala signed the eight-point agreement with Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dhal, better known as Prachanda, during a meeting in Katmandu. Under the plan, the current parliament will be dissolved to make way for an interim administration that will include the CPN (M) and will operate under an interim constitution, which is currently being drafted. By May next year, elections will take place for a “constituent assembly” that will establish a new permanent constitution.
In comments to the media, Prachanda hailed the deal as “a historic decision” that “will move the country in a new direction”. The CPN (M), which has been fighting a guerrilla war since 1996, has agreed to dismantle its “people’s government” which holds sway in significant portions of rural Nepal and eventually integrate its fighters into the country’s military.
As far as Koirala and his seven-party coalition are concerned, the support of the Maoists is crucial. Even though the opposition parties were nominally in the leadership of the protest movement earlier this year, many people were suspicious of the party leaders, recalling the notoriously corrupt and unstable governments of the 1990s. While hostile to the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, who suspended parliament in 2002, the protesters did not have great confidence in Koirala, head of the bourgeois Nepal Congress, or his leftist allies in the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist and the United Left Front.
By bringing the Maoists into the government, Koirala has temporarily defused the country’s civil war and bolstered the credibility of the interim administration. His home minister Krishna Prasad Situala declared: “We have reached the eight-point understanding to get the country out of the current crisis.” The government is counting on the Maoists to divert popular demands for more far-reaching democratic and social measures, particularly from young people who were central to the protest movement.
Koirala, a veteran bourgeois politician, is well aware that, for all its radical rhetoric, the main demand of the CPN (M) is for an end to the monarchy, not an end to capitalism. The party is based on the Stalinist two-stage theory, which insists that a democratic capitalist government is an essential first stage, relegating socialist demands to the distant future.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/nepa-j04.shtml
In comments to the media, Prachanda hailed the deal as “a historic decision” that “will move the country in a new direction”. The CPN (M), which has been fighting a guerrilla war since 1996, has agreed to dismantle its “people’s government” which holds sway in significant portions of rural Nepal and eventually integrate its fighters into the country’s military.
As far as Koirala and his seven-party coalition are concerned, the support of the Maoists is crucial. Even though the opposition parties were nominally in the leadership of the protest movement earlier this year, many people were suspicious of the party leaders, recalling the notoriously corrupt and unstable governments of the 1990s. While hostile to the autocratic rule of King Gyanendra, who suspended parliament in 2002, the protesters did not have great confidence in Koirala, head of the bourgeois Nepal Congress, or his leftist allies in the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist and the United Left Front.
By bringing the Maoists into the government, Koirala has temporarily defused the country’s civil war and bolstered the credibility of the interim administration. His home minister Krishna Prasad Situala declared: “We have reached the eight-point understanding to get the country out of the current crisis.” The government is counting on the Maoists to divert popular demands for more far-reaching democratic and social measures, particularly from young people who were central to the protest movement.
Koirala, a veteran bourgeois politician, is well aware that, for all its radical rhetoric, the main demand of the CPN (M) is for an end to the monarchy, not an end to capitalism. The party is based on the Stalinist two-stage theory, which insists that a democratic capitalist government is an essential first stage, relegating socialist demands to the distant future.
More
http://wsws.org/articles/2006/jul2006/nepa-j04.shtml
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