NEPAL: The Maoist-non-Maoist polarisation
The political stability promised by the People's Movement of April 2006, which led to the downfall of the Nepali monarchy and brought the Maoists into aboveground politics, has proved to be a chimera. The elections to the Constituent Assembly in April 2008 brought the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) into the house as the largest party. However, it did not have even a simple majority, and getting the support of two-thirds of the house, as required to adopt a new constitution, would have meant winning the cooperation of the two other major parties, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist).
The subsequent two years were meant to have been set aside for the writing of the constitution. Instead, they have seen growing polarisation on the ideological front, which has seeped into the very pores of society, with the people starkly divided into 'pro-Maoist' and 'anti-Maoist' camps. Today, the only positive way to look at the last two years is as a cooling-off period for a peace process that seemed to have moved rather too rapidly for the players, particularly the Maoists. After all, the former rebels were catapulted from a brutal insurgency to the Constituent Assembly (which also serves as Parliament) to leading the government, all within just two years.