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June 5 2007
The U.S. Governmment opposed the two parties constituting the majority of Nepal's parliament and insisted that Nepal decide the question of monarchy through a vote, not through the interim government created in a movement to oppose the monarchy.(1) The U.S. Government implies that monarchy could be a legitimate choice in an election. It pushed through a new date for elections in November, 2007 after the June date fell apart.
Ever since the people agreed to push the eight parties together to oppose the monarchy, the ruling party dragged its feet. This is not surprising, because by the generosity of the other parties, the liberals of the Nepali Congress Party appointed themselves prime minister and recipient of the other major government posts in the temporary government. It is hard to see what self-interest the ruling party had to move along the process when it already had all the government posts in its hands.
After promising elections in June as the constitutional agreement among the parties dictated, Prime Minister Koirala allowed a minor government official to determine that it would be impossible to hold the elections. Instead of sacking the official, Nepal's rulers allowed the vote to die. Even the idea of a thumbs up or down referendum presumably with other politics removed did not make it through the self-interests of the ruling party.
After failing to deliver on Constituent Assembly elections this month, Prime Minister Koirala is referring to the youth wing of an ex- communist group as "criminals."(2) So it is that this or that excuse is found that elections cannot be held in perfect conditions, as if the American revolutionaries were not much more violent and autocratic than anything we see in Nepal today. Quite the contrary to Koirala, MIM would say the rulers need to be uncomfortable to have an incentive to move along the process.
[Postscript June 6 2007: Ordinarily, criminals are referred to by individual name, not by tarnishing a political ideology of a whole youth wing. We said the same about rape and Islam. Ordinarily, individual rapists are tarnished, but in the case of Au$tralia, the chauvinists use one case to go after all anti-imperialist sentiment among Muslims in Au$tralia.]
Florida knows that no election is ever perfect. The people nitpicking while major questions remain unresolved stand exposed as prolonging monarchy.
The monarchies in the United States, France and Iran etc. did not come to an end by a vote. There is no successful record of what the ex- communists and pseudo-communists of Nepal are trying to do. The road the ex-communists are on is strewn with the dead bodies of massacres and coups. Nonetheless, the people of Nepal are entitled to their own leaders and their own attempt to do something for the first time.
The world's people can see the U.$. government and the government- post-holders of Nepali Congress prolonging the life of the monarchy and enabling excuses. In 1959, there was a constitution providing for constituent assembly elections within two years and they never happened.
Notes:
1. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aoYVrn.Kfqi0&refer=home
2. http://www.kantipuronline.com/