The Nepali people have taken up in a mass way the demands of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – an end to the monarchy, the creation of a constituent assembly and the formation of a democratic republic. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world, run by a semi-feudal monarchy that is dominated by imperialism.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has led a powerful people's war that has liberated large parts of the countryside over the past ten years. Last February, King Gyanendra seized absolute power, dissolving the country's parliament and arresting many leaders of the country's seven main legal political parties. After months of appealing to the king in vain to restore the parliament, the seven parliamentary parties finally made an alliance with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), forging a 12 point agreement. So far the alliance has held and the seven parties called a general strike a little over two weeks ago with the tacit support of the Maoists.

While hundreds of thousands of people take the streets around Katmandu, the Maoists have launched large military attacks in the countryside, including a bold attack just 60 miles from Katmandu where hundreds of rebel soliders of the CPN(M)'s People's Liberation Army simultaneously attacked an army barracks, a telecommunications tower and several government buildings in Chautara.

Last week on April 21, with hundreds of thousands of Nepalis in the streets demanding his ouster, and with his imperialist sponsors in the US and India threatened to pull the plug on him, King Gyanendra made a speech in which he offered to “restore democracy”. What he meant was that Nepal would return to the parliamentary monarchy setup that Nepal has had since 1990 and that he had dissolved in February 2005 when he took total power. King Gyanendra offered this proposal to save himself from certain defeat, under sharp pressure from the US, British and Indian governments, which all immediately lauded the King's offer as a breakthrough.

But for the people of Nepal, it appears to be too little to late. There were already hundreds of thousands of people in the street demanding an end to the monarchy entirely, not a return to a parliamentary monarchy. On April 17 the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) put out a statement urging the masses and the political parties to reject any such offer should one be forthcoming, and instead to follow the masses in demanding an end to the monarchy and the creation of a new government. According to the statement, “The time has come to see off from the stage of history the royal fascist elements...by dispensing a decisive last blow now.” The seven parliamentary parties rejected the king's offer and have continued the mass protests. At the same time, imperialist powers are continuing to work overtime to try to broker a deal between the king and the parties to try to save the king and keep the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) out of power.

For now it seems a deal to save the king is unlikely and the future of Nepal is being written by the masses of people in the streets. It appears to only be a matter of time, and a short amount of time at that, before the protests make it to the palace and the king either gets out in time and lives out his life in exile, or he doesn't get out in time and meets a less pleasant future.

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A total of 601 seats are up for grabs in a complex voting system. According to the Interim Constitution of Nepal adopted in 2006, a ‘mixed system’ must be utilized for elections to the Constituent Assembly. The ‘first past the post’ system determines 240 members of the Constituent Assembly while a proportional representation system determines the other 335 directly elected members. With 120 of the total 240 first past the post election seats, the Maoists should win at least 100 more seats through proportional representation emerging as the single largest party, much to the surprise of the western media who expected the CPN (Maoist) to come in third, behind the Congress Party and CPN-UML.

The purpose of the Constituent Assembly is to draft a new constitution for Nepal following the ouster of the monarchy as a result of the people’s war led by the Maoists. According to the CPN (Maoist), the elections represent the beginning of the New Democratic process for Nepal. This refers to a two-stage revolutionary process, wherein a bloc of progressive classes, led by the CPN (Maoist), first intend to move through a ‘New Democratic’ phase of the revolution, build a People’s Republic of Nepal and eliminate the vestiges of feudalism and imperialism before moving on to the construction of socialism.

According to Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, one of the main leaders of the Maoists, the victory of the CPN (Maoist) in the constituent assembly election is the direct result of the protracted people’s war. “The people were looking for total change. We advanced the political agenda for total change during the decade-long people’s war. We have people from different castes, ethnicities, genders and people from different regions. The main agenda of the people’s war was to restructure the state. It took ten years of the people’s war to establish our political agenda. The people felt that the country’s socio-political and economic structure needed a complete overhaul. So we couldn’t look at things through our old lenses. The media and the elite missed the picture. As a result, the CA results surprised many. The ground realities had changed and they helped us to emerge as the largest party.”

The CPN (Maoist) waged armed struggle against the Nepali government from 1996 to 2006 based on the military theories developed by Mao Zedong through the course of the Chinese Revolution. The Nepali’s strategy for people’s war, called Prachanda Path, after the founder and Chairman of the CPN (Maoist), Prachanda, involved combining the strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside with insurrectionary actions in the urban centers. During this process, the CPN (Maoist) established its immense popularity among the masses of workers and peasants of Nepal through radical agrarian reform, fighting with determination for the rights of women and oppressed nationalities, labor organizing and student mobilizations. (For more information about the people’s ar in Nepal, see Movement fights poverty and oppression in Nepal, September/October 2005.)

The people’s war was able to advance relatively quickly because the U.S. has been tied down elsewhere, most notably by the resistance in Iraq, and has been unable to intervene to the degree that it has against similar struggles in the Philippines and Colombia. The U.S. has given some military aid to Nepal’s monarchy but has not been able to commit a sizable number of troops. Because of the U.S.’s overextension, these and other movements, such as the people’s war being led by the communists in neighboring India, have been able to make advances.

Following King Gyanendra’s dissolution of the parliament and seizure of absolute power in early 2005, the CPN (Maoist) joined with other parties in an alliance to oust the king and establish the constituent assembly elections that are now taking place. The CPN (Maoist)’s People’s Liberation Army grouped their military forces and arms into ‘cantons’ under the supervision of U.N. monitors, in 2006 as part of the peace process.

The repressive measures instituted by Gyanendra were very unpopular and at this time only a handful of Hindu fundamentalists tied to the old feudal system still support the king.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center has been observing the elections, said that he hopes the United States will drop the CPN (Maoist) from its terrorist list and recognize the Maoist government.

The U.S. is driven by its own interests however – the maintenance of an empire in service of a corporate elite – and it is possible that it may attempt to intervene against the democratically elected Maoist government, as it did when Hamas was similarly elected in Palestine.

The elections paint a very different picture of the Maoists than a group of ‘terrorists’ as the U.S. government insists. The elections demonstrate that the CPN (Maoist) has been very popular in Nepal throughout the difficult period of the people’s war, and additionally gives the lie to claims that the guerrillas ruled the countryside through terror and intimidation. It demonstrates clearly that there is a call from the people of Nepal to end imperialism and feudalism and to work toward the possibility of a socialist future.

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