Ex-king out to revive monarchy: Bhattarai

KATHMANDU, July 23: UCPN (Maoist) leader and former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai has urged one and all to remain alert against former king Gyanendra Shah´s recent activities, saying the latter was trying to create grounds for reviving the monarchy.

Bhattarai claimed that every activity carried out by the ex-king under the guise of undertaking religious and social tours was motivated entirely by political ambition.

"All he is doing in the name of distributing relief to flood victims in recent days is nothing more than shedding crocodile tears," Bhattarai told a group of reporters at his residence at Sanepa, Lalitpur on Tuesday. He also said the ex-king was touring various Tarai districts performing worship at temples as part of a plan to win support from religious fanatics for reviving the constitution of 1990.[break]

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Stating that Gyanendra´s activities were quite objectionable, Bhattarai said he should not be allowed to carry them out. "I would have put him in jail but I can´t do that on my own as we now have to work in coalition with other political forces such as the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and others," he explained.

The former prime minister claimed that he had credible information the former king has been pleading with foreign forces through his emissaries to help him revive the monarchy. "He is still pleading with his foreign masters, saying that he was ready to do anything in their interest if they helped to revive the monarchy in any form," he said.

Bhattarai´s objections to the former king´s recent activities come at a time when key leaders of the CPN-Maoist, the breakaway faction of the UCPN (Maoist), have publicly announced that they are ready to join hands with Gyanendra and former royals when it comes to fighting for national issues. CPN-Maoist Chairman Mohan Baidya and Netra Bikram Chand, another key leader of the same party, have repeatedly announced in the last couple of days that their party was ready to collaborate with the former royals for safeguarding national interests.

"It will be most unfortunate if our old friends who claim to be revolutionaries support the former royals under the guise of so-called revolutionary acts," said Bhattarai. According to him, they have repeatedly informed some CPN-Maoist leaders that the former royals were trying to penetrate the CPN-Maoist party and use that organization to lay the ground for counter-revolution. "We have alerted them time and again. If they do support Gyanendra, it will be a blunder on their part," he added. "We find a convergence and connection between statements given by CPN-Maoist leaders and the activities of the former royals."

Ready for trench warfare if needed

He said that a section of society was feeding propaganda against UCPN(Maoist) leaders in a bid to depict them as foreign stooges while projecting the ex-king and former royals as nationalists.

Claiming that they rightly fought against foreign domination in the past, he explained, "We were the ones to fight against foreign domination and we will fight in the trenches in future also if there is foreign intervention in the country."

He maintained that the former king was mainly a businessman and could never be a nationalist force because he would work merely as an agent of multinationals.

Bhattarai, however, showed a soft corner for the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, saying there was a need to join hands with them when it comes to institutionalizing the republic and producing a constitution from a new Constituent Assembly.