Finally The Democrats Make Sense

Their shifting their compass from the parroting of constitutional monarchy and multi-party democracy to now calling for a Democratic Republic is a major development and should be welcomed.

Now I wish they hammered a more concrete understanding with the Maoists which, if they can, will result in diminished violence in the country, a stronger possibility for the elections to the Constituent Assembly, and overall peace.

As for protests. They need to be organized in ways that overwhelm the police and the army. Say, in all cities at once, in large numbers, along many streets. If this can be done well, that will also mean less violence in army-Maoist clashes.

On another note, why Bangkok? I have a feeling the Indian politicians like Chandrashekhar, who is strongly behind the Nepali cause, suggested the Nepalis go to some foreign place, like Bangkok, and get "inspired" there. If the good idea comes to them while they are in Delhi, it might smell a little like Indian influence. I am just guessing.

In The News

• Maoist Deal with Nepal's Political Parties May Doom MonarchyInter Press Service, World A new deal in the offing between Nepal's main political parties and Maoist rebels has the potential not only of returning the Himalayan kingdom to democracy but also ending a constitutional monarchy ..... representatives of Nepali Congress, Nepali Congress (Democratic), Nepal Communist Party (United Marxists-Leninists) or UML, People's Front Nepal Party and the Nepal Sadbhavana Party meeting in Bangkok issued a joint-call to redraft the country's constitution through a constituent assembly and force the ouster of King Gyanendra ..... ''We want the promulgation of a constituent assembly, and through the constituent assembly we will decide whether to have the king or not to have the king'' ..... is in consonance with the Maoist stand ..... the coming together of the political parties and the Maoists was ''a surprise ..... parties whose second-line leadership managed to escape to India and set up base in New Delhi have been demanding that the host country support the idea of democratic republic ..... ''If a democratic republic is good enough for India it should be good enough for Nepal too'' ...... Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai, entitled 'Underdevelopment and Regional Structure in Nepal: A Marxist Analysis.'' ...... Originally submitted as his doctoral thesis while studying at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi during the late 1970s, the book details the grossly inequitable land ownership pattern in Nepal which has remained steeped in medievalism
• Political Parties Compromise With Maoists, Vow Fight to the EndInter Press Service, World Nepal's political parties, at a closed door meeting in the Thai capital, have vowed an all-out fight against the monarchy after agreeing to the main demand of Maoist rebels to redraft the Himalayan nation's constitution ..... ''This will be our last fight with the king. There will be no compromise anymore. ...... 700 pro-democracy demonstrators have been arrested ....The largest number of arrests occurred in Janakpur ..from where, UML estimates that about 500 of their cadres were rounded up ..... ''We appeal to the international community to withhold aid to Nepal ..... ''The Maoists have been demanding for elections to the constituent assembly - that has been their primary demand. And all the political parties, meeting in Bangkok, have agreed to that demand'' ...... ''How we can conduct those elections and what are the forces inside and outside, that we need to discuss during our negotiations with the Maoists.'' ..... All the five political parties agreed to form a joint interim government after the ouster of King Gyanendra. This interim government, according to UML's Bhattarai, will then pave the way for the constituent assembly elections.......

• Nepal: Students activists demand restoration of democracy Jerusalem Post, Israel ..... goal is restoration of full democracy and we will battle to the end ..... Gyanendra has ignored repeated calls from the international community to restore democracy.
• Journalists in Nepal demand restoring of press freedom? (updated ... China Post
• US secretary of state puts pressure on Nepal during India visit Radio Australia
• Maoist stir flops: Nepal police Times of India, India
• Maoists go on rampage in eastern Nepal Indo-Asian News Service, India
• Asian human rights watchdog slams America for helping Nepal King: New Kerala The AHRC said more than a 1000 people had disappeared in the last few months as the state tries to "break the backbone" of the revolt...... You can be shot anywhere in Nepal..... Jitman Basnet, a lawyer and editor of the Sagarmatha Times, a weekly magazine, who was arrested for being an alleged Maoist sympathizer, termed his 10-month detention as akin to hell. ..... Having confided with the human rights groups, Basnet says he is now facing a life threat. ...."Only three things I could say were toilet, water and food, any other I could not say. They did not give me permission to talk to other. For all the 10 months they covered my eyes 24 hours in a blindfold and tied my hands at the back.
  
• India, USA in complete agreement on Nepal Statesman “That simply must happen and we are in complete agreement that it needs to happen very, very soon”
  
• India-Nepal hydropower talks put off indefinitely Indo-Asian News Service, India
• 'Regime may send tutored activists to Geneva': New Kerala Nepal is expected to come under the scanner at the meeting attended by over 3,000 delegates. .... Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey told the session that Switzerland supported a proposal to condemn Nepal for human rights abuses. The resolution asks the Nepalese government to start peace talks with the Maoist insurgents and to end arbitrary arrests....... Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, are advocating the appointment of an intentional investigator to look into allegations of human rights violation in Nepal....... the army said it would take action against the soldiers involved in "some wrong actions" in Kavre district in central Nepal last year. ...... The "wrong action" was the killing of a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Maina Sunwar, whom soldiers took away from her house in February 2004 to prevent her relatives from talking about the shooting of two women they had witnessed.
  
  
• Hard for Nepal to Find Friends in Geneva Inter Press Service .... last year, Nepal's royal government narrowly escaped tough measures for its appalling rights record, courtesy of the United States and India. ...... India, the U.S., and most of the international community could be bound by their public pronouncements, and therefore less likely to defend the royal regime ..... 'Kathmandu Post' newspaper summed up the mood in Nepal recently in a headline: ''Government in for tough time at UNHRC session....... the king's government is hoping to pull off the impossible....... The commitments made last year in Geneva was a 25-point plan of action that the government was supposed to implement. It was made to thwart a binding and damning resolution. ..... But so far, none of those commitments have been implemented ..... the Geneva meeting could end up in the appointment of a U.N. special rapporteur to investigate rights abuses in Nepal.
  
• Nepal police summon editor CNN International ..... the editor of the country's largest circulating newspaper Kantipur

Various Time Slips

I was just scanning through the news, and I noticed quite a few dislocations.

1. One headline said GP Koirala meets Patil. And I am thinking, if GP Koirala is out, that would be the number one news of the day. Looks like the paper mistook GP Koirala's daughter Sujata for GP.
   
2. Yesterday I read news that the US swiftly reacted to the outgoing Pak ambassador saying Pak was ready to give arms to Nepal. The Pak authorities said the guy was speaking solo. But there are a few news items today suggesting India is acting like Pak is indeed going to give arms to the regime in Nepal.
   
3. The Maoists have made repeated statements that they are for a multi-party democratic, republican framework. But today US Ambassador Moriarty is talking of a possible Maoist takeover. I keep seeing the Americans who matter keep seeing Cambodia and Peru, especially Cambodia. I am totally against any possibility of a communist dictatorship, but I believe, if one is to think of the people caught in the crossfire, helping the Maoists save face, and easing them into the mainstream is the better option. The status-quoists are dead set against the idea of a Constituent Assembly, and that, more than anything else, is holding peace possibilities back. If the king really means unconditional talks, he should go on TV and announce elections to the Assembly. But he will not, because he is a status-quoist and worse: he is a throwback to the Panchayat era.
   

I guess the Democrats will have to better organize themselves and run a sophisticated operation.

There is massive polarization in the country between the three forces. Those who will attempt to bridge the gaps between the three will meet major counter pressures from the extremists in each of the three camps. But peace overtures have to be made anyways.

In The News

• 'Bridge Nepal political divide' BBC News, UK ..... Moriarty says that failure to do so could result in victory for the Maoist rebels ..... king and the parties must demonstrate statesmanship instead of humiliating and pointing fingers at each other ......an agreement between the king and the parties on a multi-party government comprising of major parties could help resolve the crisis, although he said that it is up to the Nepalese themselves to make a final decision ...... The US has been coordinating closely with the UK and Nepal's neighbour, India, in attempting to bring the king and the parties together ...... two top opposition leaders, currently in detention, have been quoted as saying that they are ready to hold a dialogue with the king if lifts a state of emergency ...... Girija Prasad Koirala and Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) general secretary, Madhav Kumar Nepal, have said that they are ready for talks if restrictions on civil liberty and media were lifted ..... comments are said to have been made to members of a leading Kathmandu-based human rights organisation who were allowed to meet the detained leaders ...... said to be healthy but complained they have access only to government-owned newspapers
• Nepal claims rift in Maoist top rung Times of India, India .....that the rebels had expelled top politburo member Baburam Bhattarai and his wife from the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
• Asia: Senior official expelled from Nepal’s Maoist party ... Keralanext, India Maoist party spokesman and central committee member Krishna Bahadur Mahara issued a strong denial. ..... “The reports about the expulsion of our party leaders Baburam Bhattarai and his wife Hisila Yemi, publicised by the government-run communication media quoting the so-called army directorate, are one hundred percent false,” Mahara said in a statement faxed to AFP in Kathmandu. ....... “The fact is that Bhattarai and Yemi have been conferring and closely working together with the party chairman Comrade Prachanda and continuing to play their responsible roles within the party,” he said. ....... “It has been the same old tactics of the reactionaries to divide and rule by spreading confusion and unnecessary propaganda.”
• Nepal group meets Patil, wants India to consider sanctions Indian Express, India former minister Mahant Thakur and the daughter of former Nepalese PM G.P. Koirala ..... The party included Rajendra Mahto, Hridesh Tripathy of Nepal Sadbhavana Party, Rambaran Yadav, former minister and member of the Nepali Congress, Chhablal Bishwakarma of the Communist Part of Nepal (UML)...... India should consider economic blockade of Nepal or sanctions in addition to suspension of military aid
• GP Koirala meets Patil, thanks India for its stand on Nepal: New Kerala A Nepalese delegation, led by former Prime Minister G P Koirala, on Tuesday met Home Minister Shivraj Patil ..... 30-minute meeting
• Nepalis queue to register mobiles BBC News, UK ..... Applicants must provide personal details and photographs for security reasons ...... Only mobile users on contracts are affected. There are no current plans to allow people with pre-paid mobiles (pay as you go) to use them
• India-US for restoration of democracy in Nepal Deccan Herald, India Addressing a joint press conference with External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the US had strongly opposed the February one royal coup by the King.
• Activists threaten to beef up protests in Nepal Financial Express.bd All Nepal National Free Students' Union "is going to hold anti-king protests in all the colleges across the country on March 27 ..... "The protest programmes will include demonstrations, slogans and corner meetings," Upadhyay said. "Our main demand, however is a republic form of government in the country."
  
• Police beat, detain hundreds of anti-monarch protesters in Nepal CBC News Baton-wielding police beat protesters and arrested hundreds ...... communist rebels torched buses and threatened to step up attacks .... Nepal needs foreign aid to fight both the insurgents and widespread poverty...... With many of their leaders under detention, political parties have found it difficult to mobilize against the monarch...... Prachanda .. also offered to help the political parties in their campaign against the monarch. But a spokesman for the alliance of Nepal's major parties rejected the offer, citing the rebels' use of violence.
• Nepal Asks International Community To Support State of Emergency Voice of America ... February 1 was a measure of last resort ..... King made this difficult decision in order to rescue the nation from political instability and unmitigated terrorism ..... more than 11,000 people have lost their lives, thousands of people have been made homeless, many women have been widowed and the nation lives in fear...... "It is of temporary nature and as such it is being continuously relaxed." ..... his government supports the independent human-rights commission that operates in his country ...... He recalls the visit to Nepal by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour on January 23. He says during this visit, she gained a first-hand understanding and deep appreciation of the difficult situation Nepal has with the insurgency....... What he did not say is Ms. Arbour quickly condemned the state of emergency in Nepal and sent a letter to the King telling him that basic human rights cannot be suspended under any circumstances
• ICRC will be allowed to meet with Nepal's detained Tribune de Genève International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) ..... Thapa also said it was not possible to place all those arrested for terrorism since King Gyanendra power grab inside "normal jails." ..... "General Thapa also told the ICRC team that the security forces were always ready and determined to see that human rights of the people are respected and punish those who violate them."
• VIEW: India may change Nepal policy after Pak offer Times of India, India .... If South Block had any sense, it would have refrained from reacting to Islamabad’s provocation.
• India wary of Maoists taking reins in Nepal Times of India King Gyanendra has been making overtures to both Pakistan and China believing that India will blink, and things could go back to normal between the palace and India. ..... Ramesh Nath Pandey had failed to make much headway during his visit to Delhi last week, but the king hopes he will be able to convince the European countries about his point of view
• Pak move may alter India's Nepal policy Times of India ..... the king shows no sign of making concessions ..... the UPA government's conviction that the Maoist menace is India's biggest security threat remains unchanged
• Newspaper editor seriously wounded in targeted shooting in Nepal Big News Network.com, Australia Unidentified gunmen shot and seriously injured a newspaper editor at his office ..... shot twice in the head ..... reported to be in critical condition ..... In the past, journalists have been targeted for arrest, abduction, and physical attack by both sides of an ongoing conflict between the government and Maoist rebels..... most of the arrests took place at the nation's biggest protests, in the southern town of Janakpur.