Don’t Pretend It’s Not Your Fault

It’s easy to understand how saddened Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ might be at the country’s political plight.
Your average Nepali feels far worse. And it’s because of declarations like the one Dahal attached to his lamentation at the inauguration of a food and vegetables wholesale mart at Bhaktapur over the weekend. “I feel like going back to farming,” our former Fierce One let on, as if his audience was in a mood for a prank.
More broadly, what’s with our former Maoist honchos these days? Dahal and his one-time lieutenant, Baburam Bhattarai, have a penchant for methodically pointing out our accrued ills. What’s so infuriating is that they make it sound like they have had nothing to do with it all.
Nepalis recognize that there is enough blame to go around here. We the people – with our abiding credulity and confusion – rank quite high on the list. But nothing quite beats our erstwhile Maoist comrades. Nepalis went along with republicanism, federalism and secularism largely on the word of the ‘people’s warriors’.
If so many of them were willing to kill and die for the cause for a decade, maybe it was one that deserved a closer look. But when that was the price the Maoists were going to extract for joining the mainstream, what could a war-weary populace have done at the 11th hour?
Twelve years down the road, the country seemed set to acquire a semblance of political sanity. The ex-rebels had long begun nitpicking. Admittedly, they needed to dissolve themselves as a legal entity that could be hauled to The Hague. At the same time, they were naturally averse to a hostile takeover by the Marxist-Leninists.
They conjured a bland promise of a united Nepal Communist Party, which drew a massive popular mandate. A year later, factionalism persists in the party as a convenient tool to hoodwink the people and hold on to power.
As Dahal feigns exasperation as a means of evading responsibility as co-chair of the ruling party, Bhattarai, seemingly perched at a distance, dons his daura-suruwal-topi as an act of expiation sufficient to allow him to continue to pontificate on the eternalness of the ‘struggle’, whatever that might be. The other breakaway Maoist leaders at least pretend to care for the original cause in their own ways.
With popular discontent unlikely to wane in the weeks ahead, Dahal, Bhattarai & Co. would be reckless to think they could avoid being singled out for their past. The Unified Marxist-Leninists and the Nepali Congress, along with the assorted groups further to the right and the left, already failed their test between 1990 and 2002. The post-2006 edifice is wholly built and owned by the former rebels. The Seven Party Alliance tagged along to avoid irrelevance.
If this structure implodes, the mainstream parties at least have an excuse, even if a lame one. What do the former ‘people’s warriors’ have? Certainly not the will to fight, despite Dahal’s recent threat of a new civil war.
The Hague might seem like a picnic compared to the wrath of the people, especially if the former Maoists keep repeating their inanities in public.

The Red New Deal

This winter is getting doubly chilling. Our ruling comrades – at least a dominant faction of them – are itching to impose harsh punishment for people for posting anti-government contents on social media.
In a menacing preemptive move, folk singer Pashupati Sharma has removed his ditty on graft from YouTube, ostensibly in response to pressure from the student wing of the ruling Nepal Communist Party.
The fact that we don’t have the relevant laws in place yet doesn’t seem to matter. The Nepali Congress and other groups and individuals across a wide spectrum of society are understandably outraged. How they push back – and to what effect – remains to be seen.
For now, the government is behaving like a wounded tiger. Maybe it feels its yearlong existence itself is an accomplishment. In a way, it is. The ruling Nepali Communist Party (NCP), enjoying an absolute majority in parliament, and leading six of the seven provincial administrations, hasn’t been able to get its house in order. The co-chairs were supposed to amalgamate the erstwhile Marxist-Leninist and Maoist streams into a coherent association. But they can’t even agree on what to say something as peripheral as Venezuela.
In the past, NCP co-chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has lamented that Nepali communists could be doing so much more if they had the free hand Stalin and Mao enjoyed. Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, to his credit, has desisted from such dark reflection. There is of late a palpable strain of intolerance that has been creeping into his public statements. It is perhaps no coincidence that this parochialism is becoming more pronounced as his wisecracks are beginning wither.
It’s exasperating, to be sure, when ambitious government projects like high-speed railway in mountainous terrain and maritime transport in a landlocked country prompt more derision than admiration. Especially so when they seem to be technically more feasible than ever before. But, then, the people focus on immediate things, like solving the murder of a schoolgirl who could have been your daughter or sister.
You shouldn’t have rushed into the outstretched arms of faraway friends if you were so unprepared for punitive punches of immediate neighbors. Nobody likes to see the strong pick on the weak. But that doesn’t give you the luxury of using Venezuela to settle extraneous scores without weighing your words.
To be fair, Nepalis may need to be a bit more charitable here. Communists are communists first. If our comrades are acting so democratic, it’s not because they like playing the role. It’s merely a concession to the times. Like most contrivances, there’s a heavy toll on those contorting themselves out of shape.
How about giving our comrades a reprieve for the next four years? Nepalis won’t make fun of our communist leaders provided they fulfill the pledges they made during the election campaign. We’ll bite our lips, pinch our cheeks and do whatever it takes to suppress our leers and laughter.
If they keep their promises, we’re even. If they don’t, we’ll erupt into collective howls of hilarity against the assault of which little could stand.

Patching Up Those Shattered Selves

Undaunted by American annoyance with his criticism of the Trump administration’s policies on Venezuela, Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ holds his ground – and much more. Sharpening his rivalry with ruling party co-chair and Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, Dahal warns of a new Maoist rebellion if the government refused to mend its ways. What do the Americans do? They invite Dahal to the land of the free and home of the brave.
That’s the storyline Devendra Paudel, a luminary of the Nepal Communist Party (NCP), has advanced in public. Contradicting Oli, Bishnu Paudel, general secretary of the NCP, said Dahal’s statement was a consensus document of the co-chairs, but insists it’s no big deal. In other words, we can all go home.
All our hair-pulling and dire prophesying was for naught. How stupid of us not to know. A party as democratic as the NCP that enjoys a massive popular mandate is bound to have differences on burning national and international issues of the day. It is equally capable of addressing those differences and moving on. Let us now hope the resilience of our republic would be replicated on all issues closer to home in the days ahead.
Returning to the Americans, what did Dahal say to them about Venezuela that prompted an invitation. What we understood was that Dahal was ready to fly to the United States for the medical treatment of his wife when he suddenly became indisposed. Amid his ill health, the NCP co-chair decided to draft a statement that stood out for its virulence against his proposed destination. Venezuela seemed so personal to Dahal that he deemed it more important than his wife’s treatment.
More astounding was the American reaction, which seemed to see in Dahal’s censure the firepower equivalent to a joint Russian-Chinese-Iranian condemnation. US Ambassador Randy Berry skipped a government briefing held for foreign envoys and Prime Minister Oli’s virtual apology failed to assuage Washington. After a private meeting with Oli, Berry met with Dahal. Devendra Paudel considered it safe enough to update reporters on what transpired.
What did happen? Ambassador Berry probably didn’t go to the Dahal residence just to assure the couple that their visas hadn’t been canceled and that they could safely proceed with their medical plans. Paudel used the word invitation, which surely means more than telling someone who was already on the way to your home that he is welcome.
Might Dahal have explained the underlying validity of his statement to Berry with an ebullience that allowed Washington to see the advantages of letting Nicolas Maduro to stay on? Not as far-fetched as it sounds, if you factor in Dahal’s uncanny talent for identifying opportunities in the bleakest situations.
If President Donald J. Trump views NATO and the United Nations as so obsolete, Dahal may have proffered, how anachronistic must the Monroe Doctrine be today? Domestically, the America-First credo is an attractive prologue to making America great again, Dahal probably stressed, but internationally it beautifully camouflages America’s inevitable long walk into the twilight. Imperial overstretch? Take it from a communist who has fused Marx, Lenin and Mao so profitably.
A call to action against American imperialism, a crude outpouring of inner-party rivalries or something in between? Let’s let things play out a bit. Meanwhile, what’s Dahal going to do in America when he’s not seeking medical counsel? Stand between Trump and Maduro to herald a new era of international camaraderie on the White House South Lawn?

The Allure Of Outrage Beyond Venezuela

Our Venezuela caper is getting curiouser by the day.
We’re still asking why Comrade Pushpa Kamal Dahal chose to attack the United States so acerbically. The tone of the questioners ranges from scorn to solemnity. The answers are no less assorted.
As the responses continue coming in, it may be worthwhile turn around that question. Why has the United States taken Dahal’s outburst so seriously? International opposition to American interference in Venezuela is nothing unanticipated.
Washington couldn’t get a smidgeon of support from the United Nations Security Council even after sending Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to chair an extraordinary weekend briefing. While Equatorial Guinea openly joined Russia and China in blocking the US push for some kind of statement, the other delegations weren’t too electrified by Washington, either. Like Nepal, Equatorial Guinea was hardly in a position to make a difference in the larger scheme of things. But at least it was the incoming president of the Security Council for the month of February.
President Donald Trump’s personal peccadilloes may be at play here. The man has demonstrated an innate aptitude to take even the simplest slight very personally. Yet it would be a stretch to suggest that he is somehow micromanaging relations with Nepal. For one thing, we haven’t appeared in his tweets – at least not yet.
Moreover, in this epic battle between Trump and the ‘Deep State’, the State Department establishment has few incentives to allow Nepal to enter Trump’s list of embarrassments. If anyone should be embarrassed, however, it is the US foreign policy establishment, which went along with India in 2006 to constrain China in Nepal, only to witness Beijing’s incredible ascendance here.
Perhaps that’s the crux of the problem. The US was dragged by the Indians kicking and screaming behind the 12-Point Agreement. US Ambassador James Moriarty criticized the mainstream parties for hobnobbing with the Maoists in New Delhi before joining some of the same leaders on a subsequent flight to New Delhi. Salvaging the US-India nuclear accord from the Sitaram Yechuri-led blitzkrieg was priority No. 1 for the George W. Bush administration. Even if that meant acceding to the mainstreaming of the Maoists while our rebels were still on the US terrorism list. So Washington's narrative suddenly changed from 'aiding and abetting terrorism' to a 'messy abdication'.
In the subsequent years, the Americans have been second to none in legitimizing the Maoists, particularly the Dahal wing. That must not have been easy, to say the least. American arms and ammunition supplied directly to the Royal Nepali Army largely sidelining the elected government couldn’t defeat the Maoists. Later, Washington had to indulge in uncomfortable linguistic legerdemain to point out that the Maoists were not in the same league as Al Qaeda. And Prime Minister Dahal even got a brief group meeting with President Bush on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
What ingratitude! Forget the fact that Dahal singlehandedly sabotaged recent US overtures. The Americans can’t be sure the Chinese pressured Dahal to issue the statement as a demonstration of good faith. Nor can they be confident the Indians had no hand in subverting direct American interaction with Nepal. Did the Venezuelans actually lobby Dahal? Worse, some of us are even suggesting that Dahal cleared his statement with the Americans before going public.
Amid such obfuscation, muddying the waters further has it charm. Artificial or authentic, American outrage at least keeps everyone guessing.