From: "Stasi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2001 03:02:23 +0100 To: "Peoples War" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Peoples War] Nepal: Last Hope To Pacify Maoist rebels - SCMP Monday, August 20, 2001 'Deuba Mark II' seen as last hope to pacify Maoist rebels ======================================= IN PERSON by DANIEL LAK Sher Bahadur Deuba once said he had been a politician since birth, although his resume says he first entered the rough-and-tumble world of Nepali politics at age 19. In 1965, Mr Deuba became head of a students' committee in his home district in the remote west of Nepal. Political parties were illegal then, and student groups were the most active voices for change. The young Deuba, like so many other members of his generation, was also a secret member of the underground Nepali Congress party. He was a key campaigner in the infamous referendum of 1980, called by the late King Birendra to validate the ban on political parties. The vote, which saw a narrow majority support the ban, was undoubtedly rigged and Mr Deuba and his fellow Congress members continued their struggle for real democracy. He spent a total of nine years in prison for his activism, but his release in the late 1980s left him free to take part in the Jana Andolan, the so-called people's movement of 1990 that finally brought lasting democracy to Nepal. The 1991 elections swept the Nepali Congress party to power, and Mr Deuba served 3.5 years as home minister. The chronic political instability that has accompanied democracy in Nepal brought Mr Deuba into his first stint as prime minister in 1995. Crucially, the Maoist rebellion that he now hopes to end through negotiation began on his watch - in February 1996. His government's response in the early days of the uprising - a police operation widely condemned for human rights abuses and brutality - is now seen as one of the catalysts to a revolt that now threatens the entire country. The first Deuba administration has also been criticised for rampant corruption and wayward policy-making. He was known for having little tolerance for criticism, either in Parliament or the press. But "Deuba Mark II", as one newspaper dubbed him, seems to have changed his political style. Mr Deuba is now seen as the last hope to resolve the Maoist crisis. He has direct personal contacts with the Maoist leadership, a relationship established last year when he was head of a parliamentary committee looking into the uprising. Mr Deuba is staging a charm offensive among the opposition communist parties. His announcement of sweeping social reforms late last week are the latest indication of that. Even his own notoriously fractious Congress party seems united for the moment behind their new leader, not that surprising considering Mr Deuba was dissident-in-chief in the years he spent on the back benches. A weary Nepali electorate and media are giving him the benefit of the doubt. As the Nepali Times put it earlier this month: "With Deuba, what you see is what you get, but he can't expect a honeymoon period . . . He has to learn from his mistakes last time." ----------------------------------- Published in the South China Morning Post. Copyright � 2001. All rights reserved. "A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past." Fidel Castro "The Marxist-Leninist doctrine on class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat affirms the role of violence in revolution, makes a distinction between unjust, counter-revolutionary violence and just, revolutionary violence, between the violence of the exploiting classes, and that of the masses." General Vo Nguyen Giap "Without a Peoples Army the people have nothing" Mao Tse-Tung _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
