‘Read My Lips’ The Maoist supremo’s royalists-nationalists bhai bhai call raises more questions than it answers

By SUSHIL SHARMA
http://www.nepalnews.com/contents/2007/englishweekly/spotlight/dec/dec14/national3.php

The Maoist chief Prachanda’s call for unity with the “nationalist royalists” created a stir last week.

This has not died down yet.

Top Maoist leaders have been working overtime to explain the rationale of what some see as yet another rhetoric of ever unpredictable Prachanda.

It is this unpredictability of the maverick Maoist leader that has deepened the cloud of confusion hovering around the Nepalese political sky.Critics have pointed at the repeated double-speak of the Maoists in the past.

They were known to have kept a covert channel of communication with the king even as they had overtly been waging a war to overthrow the monarchy.

Although the Maoists have ruled out moves to retain the monarchy, eyebrows have been raised about the Maoist intentions.

Given the past track record of the Maoists, not many have been surprised by the latest Prachanda salvo; they are however at pains to explain the timing of the yet another turn-around in the Maoist posture.

Coming as it did close on the heels of the visit of a high level Chinese delegation led by influential Wang Jiarui, some were quick to see a link.

Said a veteran non-leftist politician, “The Chinese must have advised the Nepalese Maoists to seek unity with the royalists in a bid to counter the dubious Indian move in Nepal.”

Others disagree. They point out that the wind is blowing in the opposite direction in Delhi as was also evident from a recent minor event with a significant message.

Even as a re-think on Delhi’s Nepal policy is reportedly underway, some "royalist nationalists" had a pleasant surprise during their recent tour to the Indian capital.

“Two senior officials of the ousted royal regime, Ram Narayan Singh and Rabindra Chakravarty, and another key supporter, Nanda Kishor Ghiraiya, found the leaders of the

Indian establishment more than keen and eager to meet them, listen and seek and offer advice,” said a top leader of a monarchist party

According to him, “it was a turn-around from previous such visits aimed at lobbying for what looked like a lost case – saving the monarchy.”

Even as the Maoists work overtime to reject any covert moves to save monarchy, the prominent royalist leader that they recently had met appeared to contradict them.

Said Prakash Koirala, who was a minister in the ousted royal regime, “Yes, they want to have a unity not just with the royalist nationalists but with the king himself.”

Koirala’s meeting with Prachanda’s confidante and the Maoist spokesman, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, made the headlines last week.

Koirala discloses that Mahara came to see him even when the Maoists were in the seven-party government.

That was long before some of the top level Chinese delegations met the Nepalese Maoists to allegedly offer advice on unity with “nationalist royalists.”

In any case, discernible analysts recall a recent interview of the Chinese ambassador in which he said that there had not been a formal government level contact with the Nepalese Maoist leaders.

There had been a series of informal and party level contacts, but “not on the government level” yet!

Why? Answered a Kathmandu editor with keen interest in the Chinese affairs, “The Chinese do not have a complete trust in the Nepalese Maoist leaders”, some of whom, by their own admission, lived in India eight out of ten years of their armed struggle launched under the banner of the Chinese helmsman -- Maozedung