From A World to Win New Service: The people of Nepal have expressed their will. As one demonstrator declared, “We will burn the crown, and we will run the country.” But foreign powers led by the US are mounting what the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) called “a new ploy to break the Nepalese people.”
King Gyanendra unexpectedly
went on television in the middle of the night of 24 April, with both
the timing and the king's face reflecting a decision forced on him at
the last minute, only a few hours before what was looming as the most
massive and militant demonstration Nepal had ever seen. Several million
people - far more than Kathmandu's entire population - were expected
to converge on the royal palace. Gyanendra announced that he would reconvene
the parliament he had dissolved in 2002. The following morning, the
alliance of seven parliamentary parties that had called the protests
with the support of the Maoists met to consider the king's offer. A
crowd surrounded the home of the former Prime Minister G. P. Koirala
where the seven-party meeting was taking place, and chanted slogans
calling on the parties not to capitulate to the king and betray their
19 days of sacrifice. But the parliamentarians did. The party leaders
will retake their seats in parliament, and Koirala is to return to office.
This return to the status quo that existed four years ago is not what millions of demonstrators called for. In fact, it runs contrary to the determination to immediately end the monarchy once and for all that most observers agree has been the driving force behind the mass movement. The CPN(M) 25 April statement labelled the seven parties' decision “an historic mistake” and “a violation of the spirit of the twelve-point agreement” the seven-party alliance signed with it last year. Calling for the nationwide general strike and demonstrations to continue, the Maoists said that the People's Liberation Army would blockade the roads around Kathmandu and all district capitals.
There can be little doubt that the king's announcement and its acceptance was the doing of the US and its partners. Immediately after the announcement was made, the BBC commented that a deal had been “brokered by foreign diplomats.” Assistant US Secretary of State Richard Boucher had bragged that American diplomats “are in touch with everybody in Kathmandu, all the players, the political parties and the king” and “coordinating” with “other countries”.
More Than Meddling
The previous attempt to save
the king came on 21 April, as the mounting tide against the monarchy
tottered the throne. Gyanendra offered to allow the seven-party alliance
to nominate a prime minister. That proposal would have changed nothing.
For the last two and a half centuries and even since Nepal became a so-called constitutional monarchy in 1951, real political power has always remained in the hands of the king and his Royal Army. In 1990, in what was up until then the biggest social storm in the country's history, a mass movement forced the palace to accept a parliament and prime minister, but the monarchy retained control. The present king has been appointing and dismissing prime ministers as he pleased since 2002. He has shamelessly centralised power in his own hands since February 2005. A new prime minister - let alone the royal reappointment of an old one - wouldn't even restrict the king's power.
Yet spokesmen for the US, UK, European Union, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, China and India all demanded that the opposition parties accept the king's proposal. The palace was said to feel “heartened” by these unanimous public statements. For instance, Britain's Keith George Bloomsfield was among the ambassadors who met with and attempted to dictate to the leaders of the seven parliamentary parties after the king's speech. On leaving, he told the press, “The parties don't think [the king] has done enough, but we think it is a basis on which we can go forward.” US State Department spokesman Sean McCormick was more blunt: “We urge the parties to respond quickly by choosing a prime minister.”
These men were more than meddling in Nepal's internal affairs. To use an old cliché that has never been more fitting, these gangsters were making the opposition an offer it couldn't refuse. Their governments are the main reason why the monarchy is still standing. Not only do they control the economic destiny of this nation they have made dependent, they are mounting intense direct political pressure. It's not hard to imagine what kind of threats, spelled out or not, the ambassadors issued to the party leaders. In fact, the meeting itself was an outrage, an expression of Nepal's humiliated position. If some foreign governments tried to tell the leaders of the US Republican or British Labour Party what to do, the answer would be laughter - or war.
This diplomatic intervention came with a threat that has been unspoken so far, but which all concerned know is very real: military intervention.
The next day, however, instead of falling back, the mass movement mounted further. As the continued demonstrations and street fighting made plain, there was no chance that the people would accept the king's offer. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of them walking a long day from villages in the countryside, assembled on the ring road surrounding the capital, especially at intersections with the main streets leading to the city centre where the royal palace is located. They were met by high coils of razor wire, tanks and massed security forces with orders to shoot to kill. The crowds pelted the police and troops with stones and bricks and tore down all signs and symbols referring to the monarchy, tossing them into bonfires blazing in the middle of the streets. Some 300,000 staged a similar protest in the city of Dang. Huge demonstrations also took place in Chitwan, Pokhara and other cities. These marches were met with tear gas, lathi beatings with long flexible batons, rubber bullets and sometimes live ammunition. Hospitals reported more than 270 people wounded on 22 April in Kathmandu alone, and at least 14 deaths nationwide as of that date. The Nepalese Human Rights Society said that 3,000 demonstrators had been loaded into military trucks and taken to army camps where beatings and torture are standard. The group indicated that “many” were missing. Yet even after five days of daytime curfews and horrendously unequal fighting, journalists and other observers reported that people in the streets seemed more determined than ever. The following day, some groups of youth were able to fight their way within a hundred meters or so of the royal palace.
This is why the king and his big power backers had to come up with something else to tempt the seven parties into betraying the hopes of millions of Nepalis and splitting with the Maoists. The American government's “salute to the people of Nepal's courage and resolution in their struggle for democracy” was worse than hypocrisy. Those who attempt to thwart the people's clearly expressed will are not in a position to give lessons about “democracy”. The “salute” was a cover for the efforts led by the US to impose a resolution to the country's political crisis not in favour of the people's wishes and interests but their own.
The Parliamentary Parties and the King
The seven parliamentary parties
supported the monarchy until the king dumped Prime Minister Koirala
last year. In 1980, faced with an anti-monarchist mass upsurge, the
palace diverted it by staging a referendum on the king's powers. Gyanendra,
then a young prince, blatantly organized a fraudulent vote count. The
seven parties, however, accepted the results. This is an historical
example to keep in mind when the parties and Gyanendra talk about holding
another referendum. Nor should the talk of coming up with a new
constitution under the continuation of the old regime be given much
credit. Gyanendra never let the constitution adopted in 1990 tie his
hands too much. After he sacked parliament the last time, he justified
his refusal to reinstate it with the excuse that its term under the
constitution had expired. (The Maoist-led people's war and successful
ballot boycotts had made it impossible to hold elections.) Now he has
just as autocratically reinstated the parliament elected seven years
ago and its prime minister, unconcerned with constitutional niceties.
Last November the CPN(M) and the seven parties made an agreement around a common programme calling for the end of the monarchy, a constituent assembly and a new constitution for a democratic republic. Just before the current countrywide bandh started 6 April, the Maoist party announced they would support it and suspend all military operations in the Kathmandu region to deprive the king of an excuse to attack the unarmed demonstrators. The massive demonstrations created a difficult situation for the seven-party alliance, bringing them under enormous pressure from their own supporters, especially as they became increasingly enraged by the monarchy's cruel repression. One 22 April demonstrator was quoted in the press, “We are the people of Nepal. If the parties make a deal with the king now, we will march against them. We don't want a monarchy now.” Reportedly a large crowd surrounded the meeting hall where the foreign ambassadors were issuing orders to the parliamentary parties, chanting a warning to the Nepali leaders not to betray them. Even at the “victory party” the parliamentarians called for 25 April instead of the planned massive anti-monarchy street protests, some people marched off toward the palace, continuing the previous weeks' chant, “Gyanendra, thief, leave the country!” and vowing they would not leave the streets.
A King Reigning at the Pleasure of the Big Powers
The US, Britain and India have
financed and armed the monarchy for decades. All three ostensibly cut
off aid to the king after he dismissed the prime minister in February
2005, but high-level military meetings between the US armed forces and
the Royal Army were carried out openly.
After India's initial support for Gyanendra's 21 April offer, it later hedged its position, indicating that its support for the king may no longer be unconditional. But it has no intention of giving up its economic, political and cultural domination of the kingdom. With the reinstatement of Prime Minister Koirala of the pro-India Nepali Congress Party, India may feel that the future of its interests has been protected. It probably believes, however, that the thick and long-standing ties between the Royal Army of Nepal and the Indian Army are a better guarantee.
The imperialists and India
may or may not have any particular love for King Gyanendra as a person,
but they have been stalwart, at least so far, in their belief that the
monarchy is the best bulwark against revolution in Nepal.
But whatever happens next, what the US and its partners are most determined to save is the old state structure and especially the Royal Nepal Army. The RNA military command has once again proved that it is the guarantor of the old order by willingly shedding the blood of the people, armed or completely unarmed, as in the past weeks. The representatives of the West and the regional bullies are unembarrassed about why they have taken this stand. When the conflict between the palace and the parliamentary parties hotted up, US ambassador Moriarty urged the king and the parties to unite, warning, “The Maoists must not be allowed to come to power.” The American government has put the CPN(M) on its list of “terrorist” organisations, as if the Maoist-led revolutionary movement of millions had anything in common with organizations like Al Qaeda. On 7 April, US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher went even further. “These are nasty people, these Maoists. And I think we need to work as much as we can to pressure the king to restore democracy, to encourage the parties to stay together and to come up with a workable, functioning democracy. And to be able to expunge the Maoists from Nepali society. I think it's very much the attitude of governments in the region, including India.”
“Expunge the Maoists” - isn't this a call for a mass bloodletting? It brings to mind the “expunging” of a million suspected communists in Indonesia after the US-sponsored 1965 coup d'état, the extermination programmes carried out by the CIA in the Vietnamese countryside and the slaughter in Chile when the US brought General Pinochet to power in 1973.
A New Political System and a New Society
The advance of the people's
war launched in 1996 under the leadership of the CPN(M) is what set
the stage for today's political crisis and urban upheaval. The revolutionary
forces have defeated the Royal Army in many major battles. They have
cleared out the regime's henchmen and established the political power
of the masses themselves in most of Nepal's countryside. And they
have been winning many millions of people from all walks of life to
their programme.
The CPN(M) said in a 17 April
statement, “It is necessary for the agitating forces to seriously
bear in mind that the present movement is aimed at a forward-looking
restructuring of the state and not a mere adjustment of power… It
is self-evident that the upcoming new democratic state is not the parliamentary
system as of before February 1 [2005] and October 4 [2002], but a forward-looking
multiparty democratic republic with qualities that ensure wide participation
of poor peasants and workers in the state power, autonomous rule for
the oppressed nationalities, regions and Madhesi people [a particularly
downtrodden nationality from the eastern Terai plains region along the
Indian border], along with the right to self-determination, special
privileges to women and dalits [so-called 'untouchables'], the fundamental
right of all to education, health care and employment, redistribution
of the land based on 'land to the tiller' by ending feudal land relations,
the development of a national industry and a self-reliant economy, etc.”
The statement warned, implicitly, against the parliamentarians' “fatal
tendency of completely negating the decade-long people's war, heard
and observed many times in the present movement, or the status quo tendency
of talking about abstract 'restoration of democracy'”.
What Nepal needs - and what
the imperialists and other powers are determined to prevent at any cost
- is a new political system and a new society. This is already beginning
to arise in most of the countryside, where under revolutionary political
power, women take an active and often leading role along with men in
deciding how to run and transform the society, the caste system is challenged
and beginning to be broken down, new relations between people are arising,
and autonomous republics have been declared for regions and nationalities
long oppressed by the crown and the centre. The Maoists are leading
the people to change their lives - uprooting the very conditions that
are driving the fierceness of today's protests and that made Nepal one
of the poorest countries in the world: the grip of the feudal classes
and their social system, centred on the monarchy, and the country's
economic and political subordination to foreign exploiters.
When it launched the people's war, the CPN(M) set out along the path toward a new democratic revolution, inextricably linked to the next step, socialism, and world revolution. To bring it to completion requires establishment of new democracy, shattering the old state and building a new one where people rule, led by the party and backed by the power of the PLA.
This kind of radical change is what the US and the other imperialists and big powers are trying to block, because of what it would mean for Nepal and the people of the world. They label liberation “terrorist” because it terrifies them. And this is why all who long for liberation and all those who oppose big power bullying should support the people of Nepal in carrying out this revolution step by step.
[Richard Boucher will be explaining exactly what he meant by "expunge the Maoists from Nepali society" at the War Crimes / Crimes Against Humanity tribunal hearings we will be holding for all these arch criminals in the not-too-distant future.]
In a sense, anyone can fight their way to power. The real test of fire comes later, when a situation like this develops: where here the communist movement must deal with all the tricks and wiles of the ruling-classes and the foreign imperialists, after effectively demonstrating that they are truly the ones in control of the country, physically.
In effect, the maoists have arranged to give the SPA just enuff rope with which to hang itself. And the SPA, true to form, has promptly gone out and tightened the noose around its neck and summarily jumped. It remains only for the maoists to allow matters to take their natural course here.
Clearly, with the transparent plans to cheat the masses in the worx, with the NPA continuing to provocatively attack the masses and the maoists, in no way will the maoists be giving up an inch of territory, let alone their arms. The liberated territories remain liberated -- and these will elect their delegates to the Constituent Assembly which will take place at the people's pleasure -- and not that of any dictator or his foreign imperialist patrons. It would be insanity for the maoists to act otherwise.
The gameplan has always been to allow the urban masses and unconvinced others to finally see and become convinced that the road to bourgeois democracy has been a dead-end from the get-go; and that the only way forward now is forcing thru bourgeois democracy straight into socialist democracy. And this situation, surprisingly enuff, is yet another concrete proof of the utility of Trotsky's 'Permanent Revolution' theory of development (i.e. uneven & combined development in its political expression. However you want to define 'law' in the marxist-scientific sense).
Posted by: Comandante Gringo | April 30, 2006 at 05:06 PM