Kathmandu:
Against the backdrop of violent protests in Kathmandu and outside,
Nepal's former Maoist guerrillas returned to power Sunday, two
years after the fall of their first government, with parliament
electing India-educated leader Baburam Bhattarai as the restive
republic's fourth prime minister in three years.
The 57-year-old scholar, who comes from a lower middle-class
farmer's family in western Nepal's Gorkha district, and is
described by acquaintances as having tended his father's cows and
cut grass, showed his mettle during his very school days, topping
the board exams, winning a prestigious international scholarship
and going on to obtain a doctorate degree from New Delhi's
Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Bhattarai, known as Laldhwoj - red flag - while living underground
during the 10-year insurgency fought by his party, became Nepal's
35th prime minister after clinching a last-minute deal with the
Madhesi morcha, a bloc of five ethnic parties whose 71 lawmakers
held the key to Sunday's closely watched election.
After his candidacy was proposed in parliament Sunday by Maoist
chief Prachanda and seconded by another deputy chief of the party,
Narayan Kaji Shrestha, Bhattarai defeated his lone rival,
Ramchandra Poudel of the Nepali Congress party, by polling 340
votes. A total of 575 MPs were present during the poll.
Poudel, a former deputy prime minister who had been the Nepali
Congress's candidate in the earlier 17 rounds of vote, received a
shot in the arm Saturday night with the third largest party, the
communists, announcing they would support him.
However, despite the 108 communist MPs behind him, Poudel faced an
uphill task as his own party had only 114 lawmakers. Sunday's
election saw him poll 235 votes.
The Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal, the only royalist party
seeking the restoration of monarchy and a Hindu state, boycotted
the vote, demanding a fresh election to choose a new parliament.
So did the communist Nepal Workers' and Peasants' Party, accusing
"Indian expansionism" of influencing Nepal's prime ministerial
elections.
The Maoists, who after fighting a 10-year war signed a peace
accord in 2006 and won the election in 2008, are now offering to
disband their guerrilla army within 45 days of forming the new
government.
The existence of their People's Liberation Army (PLA) with its
nearly 20,000 fighters even five years after the insurgency ended
is regarded as the main obstacle to the peace process and led to
the fall of the first Maoist government in 2009.
Bhattarai is regarded as the moderate face of the Maoists, whose
chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda failed to return to power after
backtracking on his promise to demobilise the PLA, return the
properties captured by the rebels during the civil war, and end
the culture of impunity that saw both the state and Maoists carry
out torture and extra-judicial killings.
The new prime minister will face an acid test soon.
Three days later, parliament needs to enforce a new constitution
or face dissolution.
Nepal's major parties, warring for power, failed to write the new
constitution despite the deadline being extended twice. Now the
caretaker government of outgoing minister Jhala Nath Khanal is
seeking to extend the Aug 31 deadline by three months more.
If the extension comes through, Bhattarai will have to win the
support of all the major parties and ready the first draft of the
constitution by November-end as well as discharge the PLA.
He will also have to restore law and order.
An ethnic group seeking the formation of a separate state for
Tamangs called a general strike on the day of the election while
the Maoists themselves took out protest rallies in the capital
after one of their trade union leaders and a lawmaker, Shalik Ram
Jamkattel, was attacked by unidentified assailants Saturday night.
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)
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