Red Heretic
10th December 2005, 03:13
Hey comrades! Thought I'd post 2 articles in the short time I have. One is from the bourgeois media, discussing the King's coming exile, and the second is from A World to Win (a world Maoist magazine) discussing the new coalition between the Maoists and the political parties.
------------------------------------------------
Nepal’s King prepares for exile!
[photo]
No, that picture above is not from Nepal. It’s the legendary Mount Matterhorn, in the shadows of which members of Nepal’s royal family will be residing during the course of 2006. The King is finally on his way. And Nepalese can get on with their lives.
CHECKMATE. That’s how a disgruntled relative of King Gyanendra described the Maoist Communist Party’s
decision to call a ceasefire, and to align with other political parties in pressing for general elections. “We need to get out of Nepal, before Prachanda makes another move,” said the relative from his luxury hotel room in the Swiss town of Zermatt, after spending the day scouting for villas with heated swimming pools and electronic security fences.
Prachanda—the “feared one”, or Pushpa Kamal Dahal—is the chief of Nepal’s Maoist party. From his base deep in Nepal’s mountains, he stressed that “we will participate in a free and fair election—i.e. no interference from the King and from the Royal Nepal Army—if such an election is held within months, otherwise we will be forced to renew the armed struggle and to begin blockading the major cities.”[red heretic note: this quote is taken somewhat out of context. The MOU signed by the Maoists said they will participate in fair and free elections, under a socialist state, which is the only disagreement they still hold with the bourgeois political parties. The bourgeois political parties obviously want elections under the current system, and the Maoists refuse. By fair and free, Chairman basically means the King needs to hand over power to the masses, or else he will be crushed. The king could never allow elections under a new basis to take place, because he would inevitably lose if he tried to take part in them, and at the same time, such a call has united Nepal against him. This has delivered the fatal blow to him by creating a contraidction that he could not overcome.]
Well the international community—including Washington, London, New Delhi and the United Nations—has been urging Nepal’s King to announce a date for nationwide polls. But, as a regional commander of the People’s Army in far-eastern Nepal indicated a few hours ago, “he (King Gyanendra) will not hold elections, he knows that he will lose, and the Maoists will figure very prominently in any such exercise.” An informal poll conducted by an Indian relief organization in the far-western district of Doti suggested that pro-monarchy parties would barely reach the 5% vote threshold if elections were held today. As the facts stand on the ground, the King and his family should have been fixtures at this winter’s party circuit in the resort town of St. Moritz. But China has just given the Royal Nepal Army a consignment of arms. New Delhi, worried about its own rapidly-growing Maoist insurgency, is providing as much support to the King as it can, without upsetting the Indian Left. The position of both, the United States and Britain, is unclear but one highly placed source inside the Palace in Kathmandu confirmed yesterday that “unofficially at least, both countries continue to back the King, and both of them are finding ways to provide military equipment to the King’s security forces.”
But it’s all too late. Since mid-2004, Nepal’s Maoists have been working on destroying morale within the army and the police. A few months ago, for example, guerillas in south-central Nepal began to evict army and police families from their homes in remote townships and villages. Last month, 50-odd children of army personnel were marched to an indoctrination camp [red heretic note: bullshit! children going to a cultural dance is not a fucking human rights violation, jesus christ. Watch the movie Eight Glorious Years of People's War, and you can see that the cultural programmes put on by the party are completely optional to youth, and there is nothing wrong with them] in the vicinity of Namche Bazaar, the staging post for an assault on Mt. Everest. Over the weekend, journalists attending a religious celebration in Pokhra witnessed Maoists openly distributing communist literature to policemen and to local officials. “We hear from our very reliable scouts that, since the snows will make pursuit exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, Maoist guerillas will start actively harassing army units holed up in the relative safety of fortified bases,” a Kathmandu radio talk show host informed her listeners on Monday.
Due to the Prachanda ceasefire, many parts of Nepal are deceptively calm today. Foreign hikers are happy to pay “People’s War taxes” at Maoist checkpoints. [red heretic note: more bourgeois bullshit. no one is forced to pay any taxes to the party, the party has stated this time after time. they do recieve alot of support from tourists though, which is really cool.] After months of shortages due to a Maoist blockade, Kathmandu’s markets are bursting at the seams with fresh produce. Travel agents report record arrivals from countries like Japan and South Korea. Many schools have reopened in the far-flung districts, after guerillas released hundreds of “abducted” teachers and students. Inward remittance brokers—handling transfers from expatriate Nepalese—are very much back in business. By all accounts, the transformation in government will be calm too. As long as Washington does not open up another front in the global war on terror, and as long as New Delhi allows Nepalese to determine their own destiny.
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And now for a not so bullshit article:
Nepal: parliamentary parties and Maoists sign agreement against king
5 December 2005. A World to Win News Service.
In recent weeks dramatic changes have taken place in the political landscape of Nepal. On 21 November an announcement was made of an agreement between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which has been leading a people’s war in that country for the last ten years, and seven political parties that oppose King Gyanendra. The seven parties had been represented in the parliament dissolved by Gyanendra last February and most had taken part in various governments since 1990. On 3 December, Nepal’s capital Kathmandu witnessed the largest demonstration since 1990 as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand the abolition of the monarchy. A three-month cease-fire declared in September by the CPN (M) (but not respected by the reactionary Royal Nepal Army) was extended for an additional month. Nepal’s parliament was established after the 1990 people’s movement attacked the old political system in Nepal in which no political parties were permitted. Different factions of the Nepal ruling class were represented in parliament through various political parties, including some phoney communist parties (revisionists) that at different times occupied important overnment functions, and the Nepal Congress Party, which has a long history of subservience to the ruling class of neighbouring India. These parliamentary parties have been vicious opponents of the people’s war –they openly supported the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) in trying to crush the revolution. So the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the opposition parties and the Maoists against the king represents a major political turning point.
Despite the fact that the parliamentary parties were united against the revolution, the divisions in parliament and the few remaining rights that existed in Nepal were obstacles for the reactionary classes to organise their strength for a final fight to the death with the Maoists. This is why, in February 2005, King Gyanendra declared emergency rule, abolished parliament and took power directly into his own hands. While the US and British imperialists as well as the Indian state made noises about deploring the demise of democracy in Nepal, in fact they were hoping that the palace and the army would be able to deliver a knockout blow to the revolution.
However, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) led by the Maoists has been able to withstand the blows of the RNA and win some impressive victories since emergency rule was established. One of the most important was the capture and destruction of a major army base in the village of Pili in Kalicot, Western Nepal, in August. The king’s inability to deliver the promised military victory over the revolution has intensified the turmoil in Nepal’s ruling classes, including in the formerly subservient parliamentary parties. And the elimination of the few remaining democratic rights has driven even more sections of the people in the cities into firm opposition to the monarchy.
In any revolutionary process the fundamental question is state power and specifically which class or alliance of classes controls the state. In Nepal today the war is essentially a war between two state powers, the old feudal comprador-bureaucrat regime led by the king and backed up by the RNA, and the newly emerging power of the masses of people led by a proletarian political party, the CPN(Maoist), and backed up by the strength of the People’s Liberation Army. Ultimately victory will be determined by one of these states destroying the other. This truth is not lost on the enemies of the revolution. In fact, the US ambassador to Nepal recently said that the Maoists must “enter into peace negotiations with the government in good faith, abandon their weapons, and come into the political mainstream. Until these steps are taken, the Maoists cannot be treated as a legitimate political party.”
The CPN(Maoist) knows that the reason the parliamentary parties have come out in opposition to the autocratic monarchy is the strength of the revolution itself. Contrary to some press accounts and some wishful thinking by the parliamentary parties, the MOU does not contain a pledge by the Maoists to disarm. As Mao Tsetung summed up, “without a people’s army, the people have nothing.”
The political manoeuvring that is taking place at a fast pace has to be seen in the light of the people’s war. Both sides, the Maoists and the reactionary ruling classes, carry out political and diplomatic activities as well as fighting. Each seeks to divide the camp of the adversary and win over hesitating forces in between the two camps. The Maoists would like to win over supporters of the parliamentary parties to the cause of the revolution. The enemies of the revolution hope the political manoeuvres will divide the Maoists and their supporters and isolate them from the middle class, especially in Kathmandu.
Even though both sides, the Maoists and the parliamentary parties, are calling for a Constituent Assembly and for the end to the “autocratic monarch,” the twelve point MOU cannot bridge over the fundamental differences. The MOU expresses tactical convergence against the current Gyanendra regime but it can also be considered Act One of what will surely be a complex and difficult struggle over the nature and form of the state to replace Gyanendra’s regime. For example, the term “autocratic monarchy” used in the MOU leaves the door open for a constitutional monarchy, the preferred solution of much of Nepal’s ruling class and foreign backers, while the CPN (Maoist) has consistently called for a people’s democratic republic. Similarly in the MOU the parliamentary parties call for a restoration of parliament and only then convening a Constituent Assembly, while in the same MOU the CPN(M) restates its position that an interim government must be formed before holding any elections to a Constituent Assembly.
The Memorandum of Understanding also makes references to instituting “absolute democracy”, “the rule of law”, “the competitive multi-party system of governance” and the establishment of peace through a “forward-looking political outlook”. Here too we can expect sharply opposed interpretations of these concepts.
Marxism teaches that any state system will involve dictatorship even if the government is democratic in form. The parliamentary system that existed in Nepal until February 2005 is a perfect example of this: while democracy existed for the exploiting classes to argue amongst themselves in parliament and to take turns running the government, the state enforced real dictatorship over the workers and poor peasants through the RNA’s bloody counter-revolution and massacres. While the parliamentary parties might seek to restore that kind of democracy with or without a king, the problem for the revolution is how to establish a state system based on the great majority of the people and involving all of the progressive forces, led by the Maoist party.
The imperialists and the reactionary regimes of India and China are also carefully watching these developments and trying to influence them. The US and Britain would like the parliamentary parties to unite with the king against the revolution. India is playing a double game. According to press accounts, India (which has a great deal of influence over some of the Nepali parliamentary forces) allowed the meetings between the Maoists and the opposition parties to take place on its territory, yet it is continuing to hold several major CPN(M) leaders in prison and gives aid to the RNA. The reactionary Chinese regime recently agreed to sell weapons to the Royal Nepal Army.
It can be sure that the months ahead will see complex and fierce class struggle as the revolution closes in on the decrepit and tottering monarchy and the question of the future Nepali state comes into sharper focus.
------------------------------------------------
Nepal’s King prepares for exile!
[photo]
No, that picture above is not from Nepal. It’s the legendary Mount Matterhorn, in the shadows of which members of Nepal’s royal family will be residing during the course of 2006. The King is finally on his way. And Nepalese can get on with their lives.
CHECKMATE. That’s how a disgruntled relative of King Gyanendra described the Maoist Communist Party’s
decision to call a ceasefire, and to align with other political parties in pressing for general elections. “We need to get out of Nepal, before Prachanda makes another move,” said the relative from his luxury hotel room in the Swiss town of Zermatt, after spending the day scouting for villas with heated swimming pools and electronic security fences.
Prachanda—the “feared one”, or Pushpa Kamal Dahal—is the chief of Nepal’s Maoist party. From his base deep in Nepal’s mountains, he stressed that “we will participate in a free and fair election—i.e. no interference from the King and from the Royal Nepal Army—if such an election is held within months, otherwise we will be forced to renew the armed struggle and to begin blockading the major cities.”[red heretic note: this quote is taken somewhat out of context. The MOU signed by the Maoists said they will participate in fair and free elections, under a socialist state, which is the only disagreement they still hold with the bourgeois political parties. The bourgeois political parties obviously want elections under the current system, and the Maoists refuse. By fair and free, Chairman basically means the King needs to hand over power to the masses, or else he will be crushed. The king could never allow elections under a new basis to take place, because he would inevitably lose if he tried to take part in them, and at the same time, such a call has united Nepal against him. This has delivered the fatal blow to him by creating a contraidction that he could not overcome.]
Well the international community—including Washington, London, New Delhi and the United Nations—has been urging Nepal’s King to announce a date for nationwide polls. But, as a regional commander of the People’s Army in far-eastern Nepal indicated a few hours ago, “he (King Gyanendra) will not hold elections, he knows that he will lose, and the Maoists will figure very prominently in any such exercise.” An informal poll conducted by an Indian relief organization in the far-western district of Doti suggested that pro-monarchy parties would barely reach the 5% vote threshold if elections were held today. As the facts stand on the ground, the King and his family should have been fixtures at this winter’s party circuit in the resort town of St. Moritz. But China has just given the Royal Nepal Army a consignment of arms. New Delhi, worried about its own rapidly-growing Maoist insurgency, is providing as much support to the King as it can, without upsetting the Indian Left. The position of both, the United States and Britain, is unclear but one highly placed source inside the Palace in Kathmandu confirmed yesterday that “unofficially at least, both countries continue to back the King, and both of them are finding ways to provide military equipment to the King’s security forces.”
But it’s all too late. Since mid-2004, Nepal’s Maoists have been working on destroying morale within the army and the police. A few months ago, for example, guerillas in south-central Nepal began to evict army and police families from their homes in remote townships and villages. Last month, 50-odd children of army personnel were marched to an indoctrination camp [red heretic note: bullshit! children going to a cultural dance is not a fucking human rights violation, jesus christ. Watch the movie Eight Glorious Years of People's War, and you can see that the cultural programmes put on by the party are completely optional to youth, and there is nothing wrong with them] in the vicinity of Namche Bazaar, the staging post for an assault on Mt. Everest. Over the weekend, journalists attending a religious celebration in Pokhra witnessed Maoists openly distributing communist literature to policemen and to local officials. “We hear from our very reliable scouts that, since the snows will make pursuit exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, Maoist guerillas will start actively harassing army units holed up in the relative safety of fortified bases,” a Kathmandu radio talk show host informed her listeners on Monday.
Due to the Prachanda ceasefire, many parts of Nepal are deceptively calm today. Foreign hikers are happy to pay “People’s War taxes” at Maoist checkpoints. [red heretic note: more bourgeois bullshit. no one is forced to pay any taxes to the party, the party has stated this time after time. they do recieve alot of support from tourists though, which is really cool.] After months of shortages due to a Maoist blockade, Kathmandu’s markets are bursting at the seams with fresh produce. Travel agents report record arrivals from countries like Japan and South Korea. Many schools have reopened in the far-flung districts, after guerillas released hundreds of “abducted” teachers and students. Inward remittance brokers—handling transfers from expatriate Nepalese—are very much back in business. By all accounts, the transformation in government will be calm too. As long as Washington does not open up another front in the global war on terror, and as long as New Delhi allows Nepalese to determine their own destiny.
--------------------------------------------------
And now for a not so bullshit article:
Nepal: parliamentary parties and Maoists sign agreement against king
5 December 2005. A World to Win News Service.
In recent weeks dramatic changes have taken place in the political landscape of Nepal. On 21 November an announcement was made of an agreement between the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), which has been leading a people’s war in that country for the last ten years, and seven political parties that oppose King Gyanendra. The seven parties had been represented in the parliament dissolved by Gyanendra last February and most had taken part in various governments since 1990. On 3 December, Nepal’s capital Kathmandu witnessed the largest demonstration since 1990 as tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demand the abolition of the monarchy. A three-month cease-fire declared in September by the CPN (M) (but not respected by the reactionary Royal Nepal Army) was extended for an additional month. Nepal’s parliament was established after the 1990 people’s movement attacked the old political system in Nepal in which no political parties were permitted. Different factions of the Nepal ruling class were represented in parliament through various political parties, including some phoney communist parties (revisionists) that at different times occupied important overnment functions, and the Nepal Congress Party, which has a long history of subservience to the ruling class of neighbouring India. These parliamentary parties have been vicious opponents of the people’s war –they openly supported the Royal Nepal Army (RNA) in trying to crush the revolution. So the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the opposition parties and the Maoists against the king represents a major political turning point.
Despite the fact that the parliamentary parties were united against the revolution, the divisions in parliament and the few remaining rights that existed in Nepal were obstacles for the reactionary classes to organise their strength for a final fight to the death with the Maoists. This is why, in February 2005, King Gyanendra declared emergency rule, abolished parliament and took power directly into his own hands. While the US and British imperialists as well as the Indian state made noises about deploring the demise of democracy in Nepal, in fact they were hoping that the palace and the army would be able to deliver a knockout blow to the revolution.
However, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) led by the Maoists has been able to withstand the blows of the RNA and win some impressive victories since emergency rule was established. One of the most important was the capture and destruction of a major army base in the village of Pili in Kalicot, Western Nepal, in August. The king’s inability to deliver the promised military victory over the revolution has intensified the turmoil in Nepal’s ruling classes, including in the formerly subservient parliamentary parties. And the elimination of the few remaining democratic rights has driven even more sections of the people in the cities into firm opposition to the monarchy.
In any revolutionary process the fundamental question is state power and specifically which class or alliance of classes controls the state. In Nepal today the war is essentially a war between two state powers, the old feudal comprador-bureaucrat regime led by the king and backed up by the RNA, and the newly emerging power of the masses of people led by a proletarian political party, the CPN(Maoist), and backed up by the strength of the People’s Liberation Army. Ultimately victory will be determined by one of these states destroying the other. This truth is not lost on the enemies of the revolution. In fact, the US ambassador to Nepal recently said that the Maoists must “enter into peace negotiations with the government in good faith, abandon their weapons, and come into the political mainstream. Until these steps are taken, the Maoists cannot be treated as a legitimate political party.”
The CPN(Maoist) knows that the reason the parliamentary parties have come out in opposition to the autocratic monarchy is the strength of the revolution itself. Contrary to some press accounts and some wishful thinking by the parliamentary parties, the MOU does not contain a pledge by the Maoists to disarm. As Mao Tsetung summed up, “without a people’s army, the people have nothing.”
The political manoeuvring that is taking place at a fast pace has to be seen in the light of the people’s war. Both sides, the Maoists and the reactionary ruling classes, carry out political and diplomatic activities as well as fighting. Each seeks to divide the camp of the adversary and win over hesitating forces in between the two camps. The Maoists would like to win over supporters of the parliamentary parties to the cause of the revolution. The enemies of the revolution hope the political manoeuvres will divide the Maoists and their supporters and isolate them from the middle class, especially in Kathmandu.
Even though both sides, the Maoists and the parliamentary parties, are calling for a Constituent Assembly and for the end to the “autocratic monarch,” the twelve point MOU cannot bridge over the fundamental differences. The MOU expresses tactical convergence against the current Gyanendra regime but it can also be considered Act One of what will surely be a complex and difficult struggle over the nature and form of the state to replace Gyanendra’s regime. For example, the term “autocratic monarchy” used in the MOU leaves the door open for a constitutional monarchy, the preferred solution of much of Nepal’s ruling class and foreign backers, while the CPN (Maoist) has consistently called for a people’s democratic republic. Similarly in the MOU the parliamentary parties call for a restoration of parliament and only then convening a Constituent Assembly, while in the same MOU the CPN(M) restates its position that an interim government must be formed before holding any elections to a Constituent Assembly.
The Memorandum of Understanding also makes references to instituting “absolute democracy”, “the rule of law”, “the competitive multi-party system of governance” and the establishment of peace through a “forward-looking political outlook”. Here too we can expect sharply opposed interpretations of these concepts.
Marxism teaches that any state system will involve dictatorship even if the government is democratic in form. The parliamentary system that existed in Nepal until February 2005 is a perfect example of this: while democracy existed for the exploiting classes to argue amongst themselves in parliament and to take turns running the government, the state enforced real dictatorship over the workers and poor peasants through the RNA’s bloody counter-revolution and massacres. While the parliamentary parties might seek to restore that kind of democracy with or without a king, the problem for the revolution is how to establish a state system based on the great majority of the people and involving all of the progressive forces, led by the Maoist party.
The imperialists and the reactionary regimes of India and China are also carefully watching these developments and trying to influence them. The US and Britain would like the parliamentary parties to unite with the king against the revolution. India is playing a double game. According to press accounts, India (which has a great deal of influence over some of the Nepali parliamentary forces) allowed the meetings between the Maoists and the opposition parties to take place on its territory, yet it is continuing to hold several major CPN(M) leaders in prison and gives aid to the RNA. The reactionary Chinese regime recently agreed to sell weapons to the Royal Nepal Army.
It can be sure that the months ahead will see complex and fierce class struggle as the revolution closes in on the decrepit and tottering monarchy and the question of the future Nepali state comes into sharper focus.