Till press time on Thursday afternoon, the politicians of Nepal's three main parties were doing what they do best: bicker on the brink.

For a while the uncertainty was about whether or not a constitution would be written on time. That doubt has now been replaced by whether or not the CA's tenure will be extended. There are few, even among the feuding parties, who don't want an extension. It's just that they've put a lot of conditions on each other, which is why things are stuck. The extreme right and extreme left are the ones who, for different reasons, would like the CA dead and buried.

For the Nepali people, midnight 28 May 2010 will represent failure, either way. Whether the CA is extended or not, the political leadership squandered a brilliant opportunity to write a new constitution on time. This was a chance the people gave the leaders through the 2008 elections that helped establish the most inclusive legislature ever in our history. It made the people truly sovereign and brought in a process that allowed an ordinary citizen to become the country's head of state.

All this will be demolished if the CA is allowed to die, or the constitution is not written. To let this happen would be a desecration of the people's trust. We'd just be replacing feudal rulers with feuding rulers. Not extending the CA will only benefit the totalitarians, the military and militants, and war-mongers who want to take the country back to conflict. Nepal's hard-won democracy will itself be under threat.

However, even if the CA's term is not extended we shouldn't let the peace process unravel. Legally, we will still have the interim constitution and the prime minister could announce his resignation just before midnight and carry on in a caretaker capacity.

The Maoists have blundered by painting themselves into such a corner that they stand to lose either way. If the CA is extended it will be seen as a defeat of their strategy of making it conditional on the prime minister's resignation, and if it is not extended they will be aligning with the royalists to block a people's constitution.

It is our belief that neither the Maoists nor the other parties want the CA to be dismantled when it was so easy to extend it, and give the process one more chance. The parties have 24 hours to agree that it is not important who heads the government as long as they dismantle the Maoist fighting force, make a public commitment to abide by past agreements and forge a new constitution in six months. It's a win-win face-saver for everyone.

During the course of Friday we will know if our leaders are more responsible than we gave them credit for. This write-up comes with an expiry date: by Saturday morning it will have been overtaken by events.

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