SAROJ DAHAL

Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal may have thought that he could say anything behind closed doors in one of his periodic 'cadre training' sessions. But as a public figure he should know by now that nothing he says is off the record.

He should have learnt from the damage he caused to his own reputation within Nepal and among the international community with the Shaktikhor video, in which he boasted to his troops about what a great liar he was in hoodwinking a gullible UN.

The half-hour tirade that he gave on Monday to a gathering of his supporters proved that the Chairman hasn't learnt a thing. And that is the kinder explanation. More ominously, it shows that the Maoist party is fully committed to seizing total power to set up a people's republic through a decisive revolution. Hearing about the Maoist endgame from the horse's mouth should not surprise anyone.

Many got sidetracked from that main message by the aside that Dahal flung at his chief ideologue, Baburam Bhattarai. That there is no love lost between the two most powerful personalities in the Maoist movement has been known ever since the Chungbang Conference in 2005 when Bhattarai, his wife and close aides were sent to a labour camp. But by naming Bhattarai publicly as someone whom India was pushing to be the next prime minister, Dahal presented himself as a master schemer.

By now it is clear that Dahal has squandered most of the goodwill he earned from the international community when he followed parliamentary procedures by resigning in May last year. His latest harangue confirms that the Maoists are not interested in the new constitution or in future elections: they just want to seize power and want to sweep away anyone who stands in the way. Which is why it has become standard operating procedure for him to blame the messenger by first saying reporters quoted him 'out of context', then accuse them of 'yellow journalism', and then call editors and publishers 'feudals' or 'smugglers'.

The Maoists and their sympathisers like to label anyone who is critical of their posture as 'rightwing'. It is not rightwing to call on a party that won a majority in elections to adhere to parliamentary norms, to publicly renounce violence, to disband their paramilitary and to be more serious about the peace process and the constitution.

We urge the Maoists not to sideline or purge those who want to transform the party into a responsible mainstream entity with a strong social reform agenda. We urge them to work to end the political deadlock so we can meet the deadline for completing the new constitution in five months time.