[The mass upsurge that eventually unseated the Nepal monarch Gyanendra on April 24 2006 is known as Janandolan (People's Movement) II. The original version dates back to 1990 ushering in faltering constitutional democracy under the tutelage of the monarchy. The UCPN(M) had repeatedly tried to trigger similar upsurge since Prachanda's resignation on May 4 2009 as the Prime Minister followed by, his erstwhile comrade, Madhav Nepal taking over, on May 25, with Prachanda continuing as the caretaker PM in the interlude. But despite pretty impressive shows of organised strength on the streets, they repeatedly failed. The magic just eluded them.This current phase, beginning on May 1 with a huge rally followed by indefinite strike till Nepal resigns, was their "final" attempt. Despite nail biting uncertainties, they have again failed. This time, they tried hardest. So the fall is harder. The magic simply refused to materialise.And the massive Peace Rally in Kathmandu on Friday, May 7, morning, apart from the breaking out of violent clashes between the local residents and strike enforcers at various sites particularly since the previous day, was evidently the game changer. But that does, however, not wipe out their pretty large committed support base, particularly in the villages.The turmoil and unrest would therefore continue. So a reconciliation of sorts is a must. All the players must come to the negotiation table. But the UCPN(M) would now play with a decidedly weaker hand.That, however, does not ipso facto rule out the possibilities of Prachanda regaining his Prime Ministerial chair once again. But on the crucial issue of integration of the Maoist PLA with the Nepal Army, the terms are bound to be far less favourable than had been earlier anticipated. Ditto on other contentious issues.] I/IV.http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/1-top-story/5902-situation-returning-to-normalcy-throughout-the-country.html Situation returning to normalcy throughout the countrySaturday, 08 May 2010 09:46
Normal life throughout the country that was badly hit by the prolonged general strike of the Unified CPN (Maoist) is returning to form Saturday after the withdrawal of the strike. Vehicles are back on the street and markets have started to open. People who were stranded in various places due to lack of transportation have started heading out to their destinations. Fresh vegetables and fruits have been transported to Kathmandu and other cities in large quantities. The price of vegetables has seen a sharp decline following the extra supply. Although, government offices, most private offices and banking institutions and academic institutions and whole-sale market have remained closed today being Saturday, people are seen relieved in the hope of resuming their official works from Sunday. Most people were confined in their residences and forced to postpone their work, while many others were forced to walk to their destinations due to the bandh. Some Maoist cadres who had come from various districts to the capital and other cities for the party's general strike have started to return on their own, while others have stayed back for the mass assemblies to be organised Saturday. The UCPN (Maoist) has said, it will vacate schools and colleges that it has been using as temporary camps to house its cadres to allow the academic institutions run. II. http://www.nepalnews.com/main/index.php/news-archive/2-political/5907-pm-welcomes-maoist-decision-to-withdraw-strike.html PM welcomes Maoist decision to withdraw strikeSaturday, 08 May 2010 11:14 Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal has welcomed the decision of the Maoist leadership to withdraw the nationwide general strike they had called for last six days. In a statement on Saturday, PM Nepal said the decision would play a positive role for discussion, consensus and cooperation among the political forces. He said, the parties have no alternative to consensus and cooperation to ensure that peace process concludes and a new constitution is written. He urged the Maoists to seek solution of all problems through consensus, constitution principles and democratic values. He expressed hope to reach a national consensus after ensuring conclusion of peace process, environment to ensure constitution, transformation of the Unified CPN (Maoist) into a civilian party, integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist combatants, dismantling paramilitary structure and returning the seized properties to their rightful owners. III. http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2010/05/07/top-story/maoist-militant-music-greets-peace-marchers/208018/ Maoist militant music greets peace marchers KATHMANDU, MAY 07 - In a bid to exert pressure on the political parties for timely constitution and peace, thousands of people from all walks of life on Friday participated in a mass assembly at Basantapur. The peace assembly was organised by Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FNCCI), Nepal Chamber of Commerce and Professionals’ Alliance for Peace and Democracy, among others. The organisers gave a two-day ultimatum to the political parties to reach consensus and find a way out of the deepening political deadlock in the country. FNCCI President Kush Kumar Joshi, Nepal Bar Association President Prem Bahadur Khadka along with actors Madan Krishna Shrestha and Hari Bansha Acharya addressed the gathering. They called on the political parties to forge consensus at the earliest. “Peace is the only thing the people want at this time. We urge all political parties to find a way out of political deadlock and bring respite to the people,” said Joshi. Though the rally was organised mainly to demand that the political parties resolve their differences, it did not stop the attendees from venting their anger on the Maoists for having called the indefinite strike. After the assembly, hundreds of people marched through New Road, Bhotahiti, Jamal, Ratna Park, Bhadrakali and Sundhara. Tension flared up at Bhotahiti, Ratnapark and Exhibition Road after baton-wielding Maoist cadres attacked the participants of the rally. Over a dozen people, including two police personnel were injured in a stampede following the attack on Exhibition road. Maoist CA member Renu Chand was also injured. Police resorted to force and lobbed over three dozen teargas shells to bring the situation under control. Early in the morning, Maoist cadres also obstructed a large number of people at Kupondole, Dilli Bazaar and Chabahil who were heading to take part in the peace rally. The Maoist cadres accused them of hatching a conspiracy to retaliate against banda enforcers. Seven persons were injured in the Maoist attacks in Kupondole and Pulchowk. When asked why they intervened in the peace rally, Young Communist League Valley-in-Charge Chandra Bahadur Thapa ‘Sagar’ claimed that the participants of the peace assembly were hired goons and supporters of the ousted monarchy. Enraged at having to turn back, the disappointed people vandalised a vehicle belonging to the Maoists near Krishna Temple in Patan. Shortly after, a massive clash ensued between the Maoist cadres and locals there, said SP Bikram Singh Thapa of Lalitpur Metropolitan Police Range. Jorpati area, which had remained tense on Thursday following skirmishes between locals and Maoist cadres, also witnessed a tense situation after locals pelted stones at Maoist cadres from rooftops. The situation deteriorated after hundreds of Maoist cadres from Chabahil, Gaushala and Old Baneshwor reached there for retaliation. According to DSP Govinda Pariyar, police lobbed three teargas shells and used force to disperse the protesters. At least two security personnel were injured in course of clashes. IV.http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2010/05/07/features/anatomy-of-the-general-strike/208042/ ANATOMY OF THE GENERAL STRIKE Aditya Adhikari MAY 07 - Over the course of the last week, Kathmandu’s inhabitants witnessed for the first time the techniques of mass mobilisation the Maoists had employed in their rural strongholds during the course of their armed movement against the state. In hundreds of gatherings across the city were repeated versions of the mass meeting at Khula Manch on Saturday. In carefullychoreographed and ritualised ceremonies, Maoist leaders began with prolonged greetings culminating in a revolutionary salute and then asked those present to raise their fists in silence in memory of the “martyrs” of the conflict. The objective, of course, as during the war, was to create the sensation among those watching, most of whom had only observed the “People’s War” from a distance and had encountered Maoists properly only after the signing of the peace agreements, that they too were part of a great movement against an oppressive state. The Maoist party thus tapped into the longing among large numbers of people for mass release attained through the sensation of the dissolution of the individual into a larger, united cause. Then was time for the explication of the justness of the demands the party had put forward against the government. In order to avoid alienating the public, or creating mass fear and hysteria, the Maoists, of course, claimed that all they wanted was peace and consensus. And spectacle and festival needed to be created to draw in those for whom the preliminary rituals were too sombre. This the Maoists did cleverly, with song and dance, the recitation of poetry and jokes, and cleverly-choreographed processions, such as the one where a group of YCL cadre simulated the funeral procession of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, which had the normally impassive Newari observers of Lalitpur’s inner lanes laughing. But the Maoists understand well the inadequacy of such propaganda. The arousal of feelings of mass belongingness, if not accompanied by the invocation of clear boundaries beyond which the enemy looms, can only lead to a kind of stupor. So after the preliminaries, it was necessary for the leaders on stage to vehemently denounce, in the most outrageous terms, not just the prime minister and his government (which were obvious easy targets), but the entire establishment of feudals and expansionists and the comprador and bureaucratic bourgeoisie. In common with rhetoric employed by revolutionaries across the world since at least the 18th century, the powerful classes were posited as external parasites rapaciously feeding upon the body politic. Having foregone their right to belong to the nation due to their capitulation to external interests, it was claimed, the people would attain their rightful position only if the parasites were sloughed off from the body of the nation. But this was Kathmandu, and historical experience demonstrates that no popular uprising can succeed without the participation of its Newars, a group whose deep resentment against the state since the capture of the Valley by Prithvi Narayan Shah lies latent under the hard shell of cultivated impassiveness and hostility to all those who seek to mobilise them. The Maoists’ particular rhetorical attempt, then, was to penetrate this shell, to appeal to the Newar’s ingrained sense of historical injustice done unto them by barbarian raiders from the hills, and to thus bring them out onto the streets in the interests of regaining political autonomy for their community. A week since the Maoists strike began, it can be said that their attempts to woo the inhabitants of Kathmandu have failed. The rhetoric of polarisation—between “the people” and the state, between Newars and their oppressors—may have worked among the teeming, discontented urban proletariat spread out across the arc between Kalanki and Gongabu. But both the methods of organisation and the rhetoric only served to antagonise the two other partially-overlapping constituencies—the Newars and the broader middle class—that Maoists were hoping would support them. Perhaps this was inevitable. The Maoist strategy was to bring in the deep countryside into the city under the guidance of their immense party organisation. The contradiction in Nepali society they sought to employ were those of class—the peasantry against the bourgeoisie—and of region—rural against urban. There is no doubt that here they succeeded. But in the next stage of their movement, they hoped that the thousands of people brought in from the hinterland would instigate the urban classes to revolt against the state. Did the Maoists here make a calculation based more on an over-optimistic hope than rational calculation? Did they not foresee that the Kathmandu bourgeoisie would perceive its forced confrontation with the alien faces of hardened Maoist cadres and the rural peasantry as the declaration of class war against it? Wasn’t it evident that the Newar farmers and traders of the inner core of Kathmandu, Lalitpur and Bhaktapur, insular and suspicious of outsiders, would perceive the Maoist siege of the city as yet another instance of the predation of their ancestral lands by barbarians from the infertile hills? As the Maoist leadership sits to decide on their tactics for the days ahead, they would do well to reflect once again on Mao’s own teachings and their own experiences during the war. There is no doubt that the Maoists can continue to shut down the city, by relying, if not on popular support, on an increasingly militant and violent cadre base. But this tactic, in Maoist terminology, would consist of “deviation from the mass line” and “leftist adventurism”. As Mao taught and his Nepali disciples learnt, any struggle against the state has to proceed through careful engagement with the sections of the population that may not fully support the movement. The party, while undertaking confrontational actions, has to always be careful not to increase the degree of violence involved to a level that alienates and separates them from the public. This was a lesson the Maoists learned through 2004 and 2005, a period when their military machine was granted supremacy and the task of cultivating support in their base areas was neglected. As mentioned in the political document produced during the Chumbang plenary meeting of October 2005, the excessive militarization of the period only succeeded in terrorising the population under the party’s control. Neither was it able to achieve any significant military victory. As a result, the party leadership decided to rehabilitate Baburam Bhattarai (he had been demoted to ordinary party membership in January 2005) and to adopt the moderate strategy—of ceasing military adventurism, allying with the parliamentary parties, and pursuing a political settlement that would lead to peace—that he had been advocating for some time. It is clear that much of the popular support the party has been able to gain over the past four years is a direct result of the strategy of conciliation propagated by Bhattarai. It is now time to once again revert to a similar tactical line and to abandon the confrontational and aggressive one currently in play. And it is in the interests of the government and the forces that support it to create an enabling environment for a safe landing for the Maoists. For, the lack of support for the Maoists’ protests should in no way be perceived as support for the current governing coalition. The poor performance of the Madhav Kumar Nepal government has meant that the most it can claim from the public is a posture of detached apathy and cynicism. And as a recent opinion poll demonstrated, there is a widespread belief that a national unity government led by the Maoists, the party that won the most number of seats in the Constituent Assembly elections, is the most desirable option for the country. If the leaders of the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML show flexibility towards the formation of a consensus government consisting of all parties, their estimation in the eyes of the public will rise. If instead they decide to humiliate the Maoists by adopting an intransigent posture, they may be able, by virtue of continuing to lead government, to use state resources to their advantage for a certain period of time. But over the medium term, public resentment against them will only grow and the social bases they rest on will only further erode. 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