Nepalmountainnews Report | 28 May 2008
By ABHI SUBEDI
The historic ‘first meeting’ of the Constituent Assembly is taking place in Kathmandu today. This day dawned despite hurdles, uncertainties, warnings about bogies, threats and killings over the years. This is going to be the day of momentous significance in the life of this nation. Today 601 members of different political parties will enter the Birendra International Convention Centre (BICC) and declare the nation a republic. After a protracted and what appeared at first an impossible thing, the major parties agreed to appoint a president albeit ceremonial and an executive prime minister. This agreement shows that the parties can work on the major political and constitutional issues of the day. An independent old Asian state Nepal has shown the world how the postcolonial history of the region has something to add to its theoretical discourses through the two phenomena of continuity and change. Nations emerged in this region in the postcolonial times after the sacrifice of millions of people. Nepal remained independent on the periphery of this dynamics. But very little had people realised that Nepal has been making all the major political achievements—from democracy, constitutional monarchy, a bloody guerrilla war to their conversion into an electoral party. A Maoist leader elected by the people will become the executive prime minister of a democratic republican Nepal. If he and his comrades realise how important this achievement is, they will enjoy the support of the people. But if they continue with their dangerous methods of violence and murder of people in detention, they will soon loose the support of the mass. But their leadership has shown tremendous political flexibilities on important political issues of the day. 
A great day in history carries with it a mixed package of myth, mysticism, intimate realism, dreams, fears, tears and memories. The major political parties will enter the assembly hall carrying different alchemies that they and their histories have concocted. The major winner of the CA election the CPN (Maoist) will enter carrying a mixed political package in history.
The barrel of the gun that Chairman Mao said is necessary to win power did play a major role in the short life of the Maoist guerrillas, but when they actually entered the political process by signing peace deals with other parliamentary parties they had to reinterpret their principal ideology. Much blood was shed during the war. The guerrillas and the security forces became trigger-happy on a number of occasions. But the transformations have begun. Nepali people have given all a chance to do the right thing.
The CPN (M)’s victory in the election caused earthquakes inside different houses. The old house of the Nepali Congress experienced the worst hit of the tremor. The old leadership of this party rushed to interpret its loss. It called a meeting where the voice of the young and bright was muted as before.
They churned out all the necessary metaphors to curse the Maoists for their grand failure. They interpreted the crack in their house as the impact of the Maoist modus operandi in the elections. The Maoists’ latest gruesome murder of Ramhari Shrestha whose widow called a day of very successful strike from the epicentre of the Maoist election victory, the famous Koteswar where comrade Madhab Nepal of the CPN (UML) was defeated by a non-descript Jhakku Subedi, a visitor from Rolpa, was also used to justify the anti-Maoist logic.
The Nepali Congress party will enter the chamber following its 86-year-old leader Girijaprasad Koirala, probably the most important architect of the CA election. Many important characters of this and the United Marxist Leninist (UML) party will not appear because they have lost the elections in the hands of non-descript candidates of the CPN (M).
The UML, crestfallen and sombre after the election results has become an existentialist party. Its Karmic wheel has brought it once again to the centre position.
In political terms parties are put along the geometric lines of ideology as centre-left, left or right or centre-right etc. The UML has no choice but to take a centre location, which we can see from its existential and circumstantial rounds of sahakarya with the NC and other parties in matters of sharing power with the Maoists.
Kamal Thapa of the RPP (Nepal) has warned that the country is moving towards a crisis because the gap created after removing the king will be unbridgeable. This is a mere rhetoric. The last CA election has shown that people do not want the institution of monarchy any more. Many gaps suppressed by feudal aristocracy under the leadership of the monarchy so far came to light during the course of the political movements. Yawning gaps between the feudal structure and the people’s actual condition, between privileged classes and the subalterns, privileged castes and dalits, privileged regions and remote and neglected terrains became visible. The reality of a so-called monolithic gap after the king’s departure is always already deconstructed.
The country will focus seriously now on these multiple gaps for the survival and progress of the country and not on the gap created by the king’s departure. But the gaps that exist among the parties about the form of a government and power sharing is still a matter of concern. The texture of the sensitivity of history will be made by what happens in the coming days.
Nepali multiparty politics will become a great democratic power not only within the country but also in the region, because the course that it has traversed to reach this stage has many things to show to political theoreticians and activists alike. The parties who made past agreements have together brought the country to this great moment of history. The country has suffered enough to earn this day. Now it is the turn of the custodians of politics to alleviate the sufferings of the people and not get perennially. TKP
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