Nepal's historic vote puts women in the running
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Election
results are still trickling in from Nepal, due to poor roads, and a
complicated electoral system, but as its stands the former guerillas
of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), have already won 116 seats of
the 216 directly elected districts where counting has been completed.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s Nepali Congress was trailing
with only 32 seats, while the Communist Party of Nepal (United
Marxist-Leninist) had 30.
Final results for the 601-seat Constituent Assembly, which will govern Nepal and rewrite the country’s constitution, are still a few weeks off, but confounding earlier predictions, the former Maoist guerillas look like they will be able to form a government.
As Achim Vanaik explains in New Left Review
“Starting from the early 1990s the Maoists had embarked, against all received wisdom, on a strategy of underground armed struggle which, within a decade, propelled it to the very forefront of Nepali politics. Militarily, it had fought to a stalemate—at the very least—the Royal Nepal Army. Politically, it had redefined the national agenda with its central demand for an elected Constituent Assembly, to draw up a constitution that would in turn ensure the formation of a new kind of Nepali state—republican, democratic, egalitarian, federal and secular.”
On 23 December 2007, Nepal’s interim parliament codified the abolition of the centuries-old Nepali monarchy and its replacement by a democratic federal republic. A remarkable achievement for the Maoists.
Nepal is a deeply divided country. The ruling class is drawn from the Newars, the indigenous elite of the hill region (5 per cent of the population, mainly based in Kathmandu) and from upper-caste Bahuns (Brahmins) and Chettris (Kshyatriyas), populations produced by the immigration to the region of Hindus from the south many centuries ago. The indigenous peoples, known as Janajatis, comprise just under half the population, and live mostly in the hills but also in the Tarai, and speak Tibeto-Burman languages.
Nepal still has a rigid caste system, and the janajatis are in the ‘middle’, below the Bahuns (12 per cent) and Chettris (19 per cent), and above the Dalits (‘untouchables’). After the 1999 elections, the literate Bahun/Chettri/Newar category occupied 75 per cent of all cabinet posts and 61 per cent of all parliamentary seats. There was virtually no representation for Dalits (13 per cent) or Muslims (4 per cent). The Bahun/Chettri/Newar also hold 90 per cent of all positions in the civil services.
Landholding patterns remain unequal: the richest 5 per cent of households own nearly 37 per cent of land, while some 47 per cent of landowning households own around 15 per cent of land, with an average size of 0.5 hectares.
The current political era really starts in 1990, after a massive pro-democracy movement was met by massacres in the streets by the Royal Nepalese Army, and in the ensuing destabilization, the King agreed to constitutional reform, and elections, but the three cornerstones of the state, Nepali linguistic dominance, the monarchy and state Hinduism remained. The difficult mix of poverty, caste and ethnic discrimination and feudal patterns of land ownership were quite impossible to solve within the framework of the monarchy.
As Achim Vanaik recounts, in the ensuing elections in 1991, The Maoists used the platform of the elections to expose the inability of parliamentary politics to resolve the basic problems of land reform, Dalit and gender discrimination and oppressed nationalities; they called for a new ‘democratic revolution’, based on the dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry, to do this. They won 9 seats (on 4 per cent of the vote), thus emerging as the third party in Parliament. But the group—which would change its name to cpn-Maoist in 1995—was already making political and organizational preparations, internally and externally, for a turn towards protracted people’s war, formally announced on 13 February 1996. The armed struggle started in the traditional Communist/Maoist strongholds of the Mid- and Far-West. The Maoists began by attacking local banks, burning loan papers to indebted farmers, stealing money, attacking police stations, accumulating small arms and making cross-border black market purchases of more sophisticated weaponry; later, they would assault Royal Nepal Army district headquarters and acquire machine guns and rocket-launchers. By 2000, they were emerging as a force at national level.
In November 2001, the King called a state of emergency. The USA provided $12 million for arms purchases. In the course of the civil war that followed, the Royal Nepal Army quadrupled in size, to over 90,000 troops, and spread to areas of the country where it had never ventured before. An estimated 13,000 have died in the civil war, of which 7,000 to 8,000 were probably civilian third parties. Though most of these deaths were caused by the Royal Nepal Army, the Maoists were far from blameless.
Despite this, by the beginning of 2005 the Maoists had spread to all but two of the country’s seventy-five districts, and claimed to control 80 per cent of the countryside.
In the regions they controlled, the Maoists set up base areas and people’s committees at the levels of ward, village, district and sub-region, and carried out local development work and social programmes of inter-caste marriage, widow remarriage and temperance campaigns, with varying degrees of effectiveness. From 2003 the Maoists moved into the Tarai border regions, where they spread like wildfire, since they more than any other political force had long articulated the demand for equality of ‘nationalities’ such as the Madhesis.
In 2005 the Maoists agreed to disarm, and enter the political process again. The party leader, Prachanda, gave two reasons for not seeking to seize state power militarily in 2005, when it seemed within their grasp, but instead turning to negotiate a permanent peace settlement, involving a long-term strategic alliance with the mainstream parties to fight for a democratic republic.
First, given the international balance of forces, the Maoist leadership believed that, while they might capture state power, they would not be able to retain it.
Second, by abandoning the path of armed struggle for peaceful mass mobilization they hoped to achieve a new legitimacy, domestically and internationally, that would afford them greater protection in the long run.
This caused considerable debate in the CPN(M), which had already had a serious crisis previously over whether to overthrow the monarchy (the position which prevailed), or use the King as a national patriotic figurehead. The party has decided that the new government is transitional and its success will be gauged by the extent to which the key tasks of overcoming class oppression (above all, the question of land reform), eliminating caste and gender oppression, and resolving the ‘nationalities’ question (federal restructuring of the state) are actually carried out.
There have certainly been problems with the transition. The Maoists’ Young Communist League, revived in late 2006, have found it hard to break from the military mindset, and have acted as intimidating thugs, and have extorted money to pay for the election. On 26 November 2007 in the Kathmandu Post, Prachanda had to give a public assurance that the YCL would change its behaviour and shed its negative image.
The unexpected electoral success of the Maoists may stem from them having full credit in the public mind for establishing a republic, and their whole hearted commitment to overcoming gender, caste and ethnic discrimination. It will be interesting to see what happens, as the party have come to power through democratic elections, and have a commitment to broad alliances with other parties and class forces. Yet nevertheless, they have a generally positive assessment of Mao’s Cultural Revolution and a commitment to deepening and extending social change.
Worth reading the 2006 BBC interview with Prachanda
From Monthly Review Zine http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/yami140408.html
by Johan Petter Andresen
The elections in Nepal on Thursday, April 10th, resulted in a victory for the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), stunning the mainstream international press.
Hisila Yami was elected to the forthcoming Constituent Assembly from the constituency Kathmandu 3 -- "Asaan," the crowded ancient center of the city -- with 12,276 votes, as against 8,815 for her nearest competitor, Rajendra Prasad Shrestha of the "center left" Communist Party of Nepal (UML).
During the People's War (1996-2006) led by the CPN(Maoist), Hisila Yami was underground, taking the nom de guerre "Comrade Parvati." She wrote two articles in Monthly Review, "Women's Leadership and the Revolution in Nepal" and "People's Power in Nepal."
Sunday, April 13th, 2008.
JPA: What are the results after only a few days of counting up the votes?
HY: We have won 42, the CPN(UML) have only won 13 and the Nepali Congress have won 12 seats in the first past the post contest. We will get more in the proportional election.
As of the end of the day on Monday, April 14th, winners have been declared in 184 of the 240 "first past the post" constituencies. Of these the Maoists have won 105, the Nepal Congress 30, the UML 24, and the Madhesi Forum 16. The final results for the 335 proportional representation seats will not be known for several weeks, but it is now certain that in the forthcoming Constituent Assembly the Maoists will at minimum be the dominant bloc, with as many seats as the next three largest parties combined. -- Ed.
JPA: Why such great support?
HY: Because of the struggle that the Maoists have led. People are very conscious here in Nepal and they understood what was right.
JPA: It seems that this election has been a step forward for women?
HY: Amongst the Maoists the women performed very well. Women's power was phenomenal both in participation and in terms of winning seats. This also goes for the dalits and the minorities.
JPA: What do you think is the biggest challenge right now?
HY: The biggest challenge is to be prepared for how the biggest countries will react to the new reality where the Maoists are the leading party. Nationally the biggest challenge is the economic agenda. There has up until now been a big challenge because of the contradiction between the policies that have been decided on and the leadership for implementing these policies. There has been obstruction from the other side. After the results of the elections we can bargain for more seats in the government and we will be in a better position to implement our policies.
JPA: Is your organizational strength big enough to cope?
HY: We have enough organizational strength. We have observed during the peace process that we have equal organizational strength with the government organs.
JPA: Did the elections go as you had predicted?
HY: We were expecting that there was going to be heavy interference from national and international reaction. We were very scared that they were rigging the referendum. I think we had a good campaign. We sent a message to the masses about unity among all the parties, especially with the left. And when the CPN(UML) decided not to have an alliance with any parties it disappointed us. But at the same time it exposed them. We told our cadres to unite with the parties that are against the king. When the CPN(UML) at the last minute before the election, approached us in distress with suggestions we rejected them. I think that we had a good concrete analysis of the situation.
JPA: You did well in your constituency?
HY: My constituency was a CPN(UML) bastion and a very popular candidate from CPN(UML) was my main opponent. It was therefore an important victory to come in first.
JPA: How will the feudal class react?
HY: They rely on foreign forces. They are waiting for some signal. But we have been gradually reducing their power. They are now quite weakened.
JPA: Will it take many years to implement a land reform?
HY: I think we can have a land reform pretty soon. We have a commission already, so we can now push forward.
Johan Petter Andresen is a Norwegian friend of MRZine now in Nepal