Nepal
April 17
The Maoists triumph
(The Economist) The former rebels surprise everyone with a stunning electoral success. That may prove to have been the easy part
Managing a fractious coalition is just the start of the Maoists’ troubles. The drafting of the new constitution will be a dreadful business.
And then there is a peace process to salvage. The new government will inherit a huge backlog of peacemaking provisions neglected by its predecessor—including the matter of what to do with the Maoists’ 23,000-strong army, which stands armed and organised, under UN surveillance, and the 90,000-strong royalist army.
“Prachandaism” [which] describes the Maoists’ struggle as a “bourgeois peasant revolution”, is tricky to pin down. Their economic policies, which include seeking foreign investment for Nepal’s hydropower industry, seem quite liberal. Many of their social policies, which the Maoists describe as a war against “feudalism”, are also laudable. Besides scrapping a discredited monarchy, they would fight caste-based discrimination, the deprivation of tribal groups and the exploitation of landless labourers. For poor Nepalis, all this makes a popular message.
NEPAL: Maoists Armed With Popular Vote
By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Apr 14 (IPS) - Proving the political pundits wrong, the people of Nepal have voted overwhelmingly for former rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal- Maoist (CPN-M), in the just concluded constituent assembly elections in this Himalayan nation.
Postponed twice the historic election finally took place on Apr. 10.
The new assembly is expected to draw up a new constitution for a republic that will replace rule by a 240-year-old monarchy.
If the CPN-M does gain a simple majority in the assembly, it can be expected to make towards abolishing the unpopular monarchy as its first order of business.
Although the CPN-M has always claimed an undercurrent support among the Nepali public, the results caught them by surprise as much as its rivals.
Except in the central tarai (plains) where regional Madhesi (plainsmen) parties have done well, and eastern hills, the former underground party has swept the elections across the country in which 60 percent of the 17.6 million eligible voters cast their votes. Of these, 4.1 million are newly-registered voters.
April 13
Does the Dalai Lama Know He’s Nepalese?
President Bush’s National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos and repeatedly confused Nepal and Tibet.
Discussing how Bush has “no reason not to go” to this summer’s Olympic games in Beijing and how boycotting them would be wrong, Hadley discussed the outcry over Tibet and the US response, only he kept saying Nepal. More
