Nepal’s Prachanda: “Globalization Is Unavoidable”

Nepal, home to Mt. Everest and situated between India and China (Tibet), is witnessing a different kind of “surge”. The armed rebels who fought a decade-long bloody war to end monarchy are now poised to come into power — not through the barrel of a gun but through the ballot box.

The seal over the conduct of free and fair election has been put by none other than former US president Jimmy Carter, co-founder of Carter Center who heads a 60-member international election observer mission to Nepal.

“The election also means Nepal’s 239-year-old monarchy will be abolished. Although the palace massacre of 2001 – which left nine of the royal family dead – and parliament’s dismissal by the new king in 2005 cost the monarchy public support, there are still those who would wish to keep a constitutional monarchy,” reports The Independent.

“The latest results from last week’s vote to select a new national assembly give the Maoists 101 out of the 178 seats counted so far. With the first scheduled task of the new assembly to draft a new constitution and abolish the country’s monarchy, it appears Prachanda will become the first president of a republican Nepal.”

Prachanda who? “When Pushpa Kamal Dahal was a schoolteacher in the mountains of Nepal he was nicknamed ‘Lotus Flower’ as a result of his soft and gentle manners. Not surprisingly, when he gave up teaching to lead a rebel army he adopted the more martial nom de guerre of Prachanda, or ‘the Fierce One’.

“Now, as the Maoist party he leads surges towards a landslide election victory, the 52-year-old is preparing to adopt yet another new title, that of president. He says it is a position he is ready for ‘if the masses want to give me the responsibility’.

“Indeed, where once he talked the rhetoric of Marx, Prachanda now talks of turning Nepal into ‘the Switzerland of Asia’. He says globalisation is unavoidable and he wants to encourage millions of tourists to his impoverished country.”

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