Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Baburam Moriarty Debate


Large quantity of explosives seized from Sunauli area

By A Staff Reporter

KATHMANDU, Feb. 28: The Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) seized a large quantity of explosives two kilometres away from Sunauli near the Nepal-India border Tuesday afternoon, the Defence Ministry said.

Around 2,500 kg of gelatines, 475 Kg of Neogel-90 (Emulsion Explosive Class-2), 7,500 meter of safety fuse, 29,500 sets of detonators along with 10,200 sets of electronic detonators were confiscated by the joint security forces on duty. This is the first time the joint security forces seized explosives in such a huge quantity, the ministry said.

The explosives were intercepted two Km away from the Sunauli check post while going towards Bhairahawa from a Tata truck with Indian plate no: JH 11 A 9822 at 3:30 p.m. The explosives were hidden inside the truck loaded with coal. The Defence Ministry has stated that had the explosives gone undetected then there could have been a colossal damage to life and property.
I kept reading Baburam Bhattarai has written a rebuttal to Moriarty. I searched on Google. I searched at the website of The Kathmandu Post. I called up friends and asked. I put a SOS at Sajha. I should have started at INSN for that is where I found the article.

This is an important debate. But this has not yet become a debate. The two are talking past each other. Specific issues are being bypassed by both individuals.

Baburam Bhattarai is for a constituent assembly. Moriarty is not against that idea. Baburam Bhattarai is for a democratic republic. Moriarty is from a democratic republic.

It is not true Moriarty is against the 12 point agreement. He has problems with only two issues in there. One, that the Maoists may use violence in the movement for a democratic republic. Two, the country will still have two standing armies when it goes through a constituent assembly. I myself have those two concerns. But those are not to be understood as a rejection of the 12 point agreement. Instead, it is like saying, let's keep talking. Let's keep clarifying matters. So instead of accusing Moriarty of rejecting the 12 point agreement, why not engage him on a debate on these two topics?

If the Maoists truly are for a democratic republic, they should be glad Moriarty and the other foreign powers have come forth to spell support for the idea of a constituent assembly. But that also means the mechanics of that assembly are open to debate now. I propose we dismantle both the armies and then go for a constituent assembly. What do you say to that, Dr. Bhattarai?

5 Point Agreement
10 Point Agreement To Succeed 12 Point Agreement

India, Europe, US For A Constituent Assembly
Moriarty Deserves Your Ears
Lohani Baburam Debate

I would like to commend Dr. Bhattarai for an exceptionally well written article. His command of the English language comes across as better than that of Moriarty himself. That is really saying something. Ever since the 12 point agreement, I have not heard Dr. Bhattarai himself say anything that would make me doubt his commitment to the idea of a democratic republic, although I have disagreed with his proposition that violence is the only way to victory. But Prachanda is a slightly different story.

Dr. Bhattarai, what does your party supremo Prachanda mean by this?
We Want To Stop Bloodshed: Prachanda (February 6, 2005) We are talking of multiparty democracy in a specific sense, within a specific constitutional framework. We are not talking about bourgeois parliamentary democracy. This multiparty democracy will be anti-imperialist and anti-feudal. In other words, only within an anti-feudal, anti-imperialist constitutional framework is multiparty democracy possible. That is why armed struggle is also necessary, and unity in action with the other political parties against the monarchy is also a necessity. The socio-economic change we are fighting for is against feudalism and imperialism and it is within the context of that struggle that we are talking of multiparty democracy.
This reminds me of Prachanda's outburst to spread socialism and communism across the world in a joint statement with the Indian Maoist leader that came days after an article by you in the Nepali Post where you very specifically committed your party to the idea of multi-party democracy, rule of law, and the whole nine yards. At that point I suggested Baburam is superior to Prachanda intellectually, but Prachanda has superior organizational skills to try and soothe Prachanda's nerves. First, your article came out. It elevated me. Second, Prachanda's outburst. I came crashing down to the ground. Third, the ceasefire. I was in the clouds again. I reached for a glass of water, with ice, a first during my entire time blogging. My head was ringing hollow. It had been a roller coaster ride.

After Ganapathy, A Ceasefire
What Is Prachanda Doing?
Is Prachanda For Real?
To: Dr. Baburam Bhattarai
Baburam Bhattarai, Pramod Aryal, Ram Chandra Poudel

If Prachanda is not talking of a "bourgeois parliamentary democracy," what is he talkng about? First define bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Then spell out the alternative that you have in mind. And if Prachanda is off the mark, say so. Prachanda just so happens to be the top leader in your party. I am going to take seriously his words spoken to the world media.

What myself am proposing is not your traditional democracy as practiced anywhere else on earth: Proposed Republican Constitution 2006. That is why it is important for me to seek clarification from Prachanda.

On Moriarty’s pontification

By Baburam Bhattarai
Kathmandu Post, 23 February 2006, Thursday

There is a place called Chor-kaatey near our village in Gorkha district. Chor-kaatey literally means, ‘chopping off the thief ‘. There is an interesting anecdote about how this place got its name. In olden days whenever there was any crime in the locality, all the suspects would be herded there and made to lie down with their legs stretched. The village headman with an axe in hand would then shout aloud: ‘Chop off the legs of the thief (or culprit)!’ It often happened that the real culprit would involuntarily pull up his legs in fear and thus get caught and punished.

The recent utterances of the US ambassador James F Moriarty have forced us to get reminded of this anecdote, but in a new context. After the February coup, there was wild speculation about the real motivating force behind it. The source of the seemingly unusual confidence of the autocratic monarch in the face of such complete failure and isolation of his regime over the period since then had obviously been the subject of intense guess-work among all political observers on Nepal.

Moriarty, with his vitriolic monologue against the democratic republican movement on February 15 and an equally provocative interview to the BBC Nepali service on February 19, has demystified the suspense and exposed the strong nexus between the US imperialist ruling classes and Nepal’s feudal autocratic forces.

In that sense Moriarty deserves our appreciation, at least for his candidness. But looking at the matter more closely, the issue is quite serious. The whole political spectrum, except a few royalist die-hards, have rightly condemned the ambassador’s unwarranted and deeply flawed pontification on the ongoing democratic republican movement. Particularly the Seven Party Alliance (SPA), the civil society and the independent media have so thoroughly repudiated and exposed the ambassador’s pro-monarchy and anti-democratic outbursts that we hardly find any new arguments to supplement them.

We just wonder why the ambassador is so intent on shooting at his own feet, or alienating the overwhelming majority of Nepal’s masses and the urban intelligentsia that look towards the West for democratic inspirations and ideas.

The timing of Moriarty’s harangue is all the more inopportune when the entire international community, ranging from the UN, the EU and Japan to the most important neighbors India and China, seem to be arriving at a consensus for democracy and peace by dumping the recalcitrant king and his cohorts. If the US interests in Nepal are only geo-strategic, in a region flanked by over two billion people, as claimed by the ambassador himself in his BBC interview, this certainly is not the best way to achieve them. We wonder what more reasonable people in the US, like Senator Patrick Leahy, have to say on this.

There is some insinuation in certain quarters that Moriarty may have got provoked by our leadership’s observations on the role of US ruling classes in Nepal. We don’t think objective facts substantiate this. We have rather consciously avoided to take umbrage with the sole super power even when it has blatantly violated our sovereignty and bolstered the royal regime and the Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) against the revolutionary democratic forces. To make an ideological criticism of imperialism and the so-called globalization agenda is an entirely different thing. It is an open secret that without the massive modernization program in the form of training, weapons supply and ultra-modern fortification of the barracks carried out by US assistance after 2002, the RNA would not have been able to withstand this long and carry out the regressive monarchist agenda. The frequent high level visits of US military and intelligence functionaries to Nepal are definitely not meant for pilgrimage or recreation.

Despite this, we have exercised maximum restraint, and Chairman Prachanda in his recent interview to the BBC television has categorically stated that we are ready to work with all international power centers, including the US, in the future democratic republican set-up. Hence the problem lies entirely with the US ruling classes, and not with us, which is amply reflected in Moriarty’s outbursts.

Firstly, the problem lies with the McCarthyian outlook and the Cold War era anti-communist paranoia. The central thesis of Moriarty’s lecture is that the Maoists should be militarily crushed and not allowed to come to power at any cost. Hence anybody who can do this job will get the US support. This has been the rationale for the continued US backing to the royal regime. As the king has failed in this mission over the past year, Moriarty has now frantically appealed to the parliamentary political parties to abandon the anti-monarchy democratic movement and surrender to the king. He has labored hard to sell his paranoia to the SPA and goaded them to break out of the 12-point understanding with the CPN (Maoist).

Moriarty further raises the bogey of future ‘totalitarianism’ of the CPN (Maoist) to scare away the SPA, as if the real and existing totalitarianism of the monarchy is better than an imaginary and hypothetical ‘totalitarianism’ of the future. Only a die-hard McCarthyian mindset can accuse the CPN (Maoist) of pursing ‘totalitarianism’ when the Party has formally passed an historic resolution on ‘Development of Democracy in the 21st Century’ and Chairman Prachanda has so well articulated the Party’s commitment to a multiparty competitive politics in the future democratic republican set-up in his recent interviews.

Secondly, the whole edifice of Moriarty’s arguments is based on the thesis that the SPA and monarchy are “(T)wo legitimate constitutional actors- who should be on the same side.”

However, no sane person in Nepal is prepared to believe that the monarchy after October 4, and particularly after February 1, is a ‘legitimate constitutional actor’. Even the Supreme Court in a recent judgment has ruled (though indirectly) that the king no longer remains so. The only ‘legitimacy’ of the king is his backing by the RNA and certain foreign powers, particularly the US. It is really paradoxical that the loudest votaries of ‘democracy’ fail to see the ground reality and swear by the worst despots when their strategic interests are at stake.

That is why Suharto, Marcos, Pinochet, Musharraf and the likes are the best ‘democrats’ and ‘legitimate constitutional actors’ for the US. And the Maoists, which has been consistently advocating for a free and fair election to a constituent assembly as a minimum basis for peace and democracy, is branded ‘totalitarian’!

Thirdly, another fundamental flaw with Moriarty’s arguments lies with his supposition that the RNA is the “logical source of defense” for the parliamentary parties and democracy. But the historical facts prove just the opposite. The RNA has been the principal bulwark of autocracy historically, as it was repeatedly used by the monarchy to stage coup d’ etat against the parliamentary democracy in 1960 and again in 2003-5.

Hence the most important precondition for institutionalizing democracy in the country is the creation of a new national army committed to democracy. This has been one of the key proposals put forward by the CPN (Maoist) and increasingly accepted by other democratic political forces and the civil society.

But Moriarty has very conveniently distorted our proposal and provocatively insinuated that we intend to overtake all the other political forces on the strength of our People’s Liberation Army (PLA) once the RNA is no longer there. As Chairman Prachanda has clearly enunciated in his recent interviews, what we have proposed is the restructuring of both the RNA and the PLA and the creation of a new national army according to the result of the constituent assembly elections. During the elections both the armed forces can remain passive and neutral under a credible international supervision. What is wrong with that?

Moriarty has very selectively picked up names of individuals killed during the course of the civil war and has tended to sensationalize them for his political arguments. But has he cared to read the recent report prepared by Ian Martin and his team from the UN Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights? Does he dare accept that the royal regime is the worst perpetrator of human rights violations in the world?

Does he know that the highest number of disappearances by the state takes place in Nepal? Selective use of tragic cases of individual death for political arguments would serve no purpose except to expose one’s own insensitivity and callousness. Moreover, Moriarty’s suggestion to view Umesh Thapa’s sacrifice “as a catalyst for reconciliation and compromise” with the king crosses all limits of insensitivity and borders on insanity.

These are extremely rare historic times for Nepal. The need of the hour is a complete political, economical, social and cultural transformation of society. The 12-point understanding between the SPA and Maoist revolutionaries provides a minimum basis for democracy, peace and progress in the country. Let no one wreck this historic resolution of the Nepali people. No one but the Nepali people themselves have the right over their destiny.

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