In a packed school hall on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Pushpa Kamal Dahal mounted a podium draped with a hammer-and-sickle banner and raised a clenched fist in the air.

“This is the outcome of ten years of revolution!” the Nepalese Maoist leader – who goes by the nom de guerre Prachanda, meaning Fierce One – cried into the microphone to rapturous applause. “Everything must change!”

It was an emotional moment for the 53-year-old former schoolteacher, giving his final campaign speech before an historic election today that could fulfil his most cherished dream: to abolish the Nepalese monarchy.

If he can’t do it by the ballot box, he is willing to use the combined force of his supporters.

Ever since Prithvi Narayan Shah conquered Nepal 240 years ago, this country has been ruled by the Shah Dynasty, revered as incarnations of the Hindu god Vishnu. However, after a hapless seven-year reign, Gyanendra, the current King, seems certain to be the last.

Today’s election – Nepal’s first in nine years – is the culmination of a process that began when a lovesick Crown Prince shot dead most of the Royal Family, including his father, King Birendra, and then himself, in 2001. Gyanendra, the younger brother of the late King, took the throne and then seized absolute power in 2005, only to be forced to back down the following year by a popular uprising spearheaded by Prachanda’s Maoists.

Prachanda signed a peace deal with the Government in November 2006, ending a decade-long civil war that killed 13,000 people, and agreed to take part in elections to a new constituent assembly. Then, in December, the main political parties agreed that as soon as the assembly held its first meeting the first item on the agenda would be scrapping the monarchy.

Nobody knows if the Maoists – still listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States – will accept the election results if they do badly, or whether the King will give up without a fight. “The monarchy is unlikely to disappear without some final, possibly violent, confrontation,” the International Crisis Group said in a report.

Yesterday King Gyanendra issued a rare statement expressing his support for the election in a last-minute appeal for sympathy from the 29 million people of Nepal, 80 per cent of whom are Hindu.

“It has always been our desire to ensure that under no circumstance are the nation’s existence, independence and integrity compromised,” he said. “We call upon all adult citizens to exercise their democratic right in a free and fair environment.”

Gyanendra is no stranger to humiliation. Since his failed attempt for total power he has had his palaces renationalised and his portrait replaced by Mount Everest on the national currency. The Queen has even lost her official beauticians.

Nevertheless, a small number of monarchists, mainly in the army and the business elite, continue to support him, and two royalist parties are contesting the election.

“The institution of the monarchy is inseparable from the existence of the Nepalese State,” Kamal Thapa, a former minister and head of the royalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal, said. “The end of the monarchy is not a guarantee of democracy.”

His party is demanding a referendum on the future of the Royal Family, arguing that the majority of Nepalese still support the institution. A recent opinion poll found that 49 per cent of Nepalese wanted to retain the monarchy, while giving King Gyanendra a personal rating of two out of ten.

Prachanda, however, has warned the King that he must vacate his palaces after the assembly meeting or face the consequences. “If he resists the verdict of the masses, the people will encircle his palace and force him to flee,” he told The Times.

The Maoists were willing to accept any election result, although they were expecting a majority in the 601-seat assembly. Other Maoist leaders have reserved the right to return to armed struggle if they consider the election to be unfair. Such threats have raised fears about the willingness and ability of the Maoists to transform themselves into a democratic party.

Since last year they have confined their 19,000 fighters to camps and stored their weapons in caches sealed and monitored by the United Nations. However, their Young Communist League still has 100,000 full-time members and 500,000 supporters, whom election monitors accuse of intimidating voters and preventing rivals from campaigning.

The Maoists have themselves been victims of preelection violence, with eight of their members shot dead by police in the past two days. In the south of the country, armed ethnic minority groups have called a general strike and threatened attacks during the elections.

Against this bloody backdrop, few analysts expect the Maoists to win a majority over the favourites, the Nepali Congress and the UML. They also do not see Prachanda heading back to the jungle. The worry is that without enough seats to maintain clout in parliament, he may struggle to keep hardline cadres on side and use protests and strikes to get his way instead.

Downfall of a dynasty

June 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra, apparently in a drunken rage, shoots dead King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and seven other members of the Royal Family and then shoots himself. Prince Gyanendra becomes King of Nepal

July Maoist rebels step up campaign of violence. Prime Minister G. P. Koirala resigns, succeeded by Sher Bahadur Deuba

November State of emergency declared

2003 Ceasefire declared in January, and truce holds for seven months. Resurgence in violence in summer

2005 King Gyanendra dismisses Government, brings back state of emergency and assumes direct power until international pressure forces him to back down in April

2006 Parliament reinstated, voting unanimously to curtail powers of the King. First peace talks in nearly three years result in plan to bring Maoists into interim government and a peace accord formally ending ten-year insurgency

2007 First attack in the capital Kathmandu since end of insurgency. Maoists quit Government to push for abolition of monarchy. In December the caretaker government announces that a new constitution will abolish monarchy, although its legality is unclear

2008 Elections set for April 10. A series of bombs kill and injure dozens in southern Terai plains, where groups are demanding regional autonomy

Source: Times archives

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