Unhappy with the prime minister´s "unilateral" decision and with leadership of the government in their sights, the Maoists have slighted Khanal publicly, saying that he would resign on August 13 with or without a peace deal. [break]
Maoist rebuff of Khanal´s deadline has another goal also: Sending a clear signal to the Nepali Congress that they sincerely want to negotiate on the peace process and on formation of a national consensus government. Whether the Maoists will sever their ties with Khanal, forcing resignation on the prime minister on August 13, will, however, largely depend upon how their negotiations with the NC progress.
But let´s first take up why Khanal issued a conditional deadline for his resignation and how it has backfired.
However compromise-prone and uninspiring a person may be, once anointed in the highest public office it´s only natural for that person to crave to leave behind a good legacy.
Khanal is no different. He became prime minister under difficult circumstances and purely by riding piggy-back on the Maoist party, something he is fully aware of. It´s also partly why he is so desperate to leave his own mark.
When Khanal became prime minister, he and close aides were fully convinced that the Maoists had no choice but to conclude the peace process during his premiership. This confidence was so high that one close aide had privately asserted that the prime minister would resign before May 28 if there were no tangible progress in the peace process. The nation watched the May 28 deadline come and go without any progress on peace and yet Khanal managed to cling to power despite having committed himself in writing to resigning.
With time ticking away and yet another deadline (the current term of the constituent assembly expires on August 31) approaching fast, Khanal started to lose confidence in the Maoists.
This only added to his sense of desperation. And while the Maoists were beset by intra-party wranglings for more than a month, Khanal quietly reached out to the NC through a confidant. His "Minister for Negotiations" Ghanashyam Bhusal (who doesn´t hold any formal portfolio in the cabinet) built up a good rapport with NC leader Shekhar Koirala over time and through him Khanal sent a message to the NC leadership that he was eager for a common stance with the NC on the peace process and to exert "decisive pressure" on the Maoists.
After several rounds of ground work by Bhusal and Koirala, NC President Sushil Koirala and party leaders Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ram Chandra Paudel met Prime Minister Khanal at his official residence at Baluwatar on July 29. Bhusal briefed the leaders on the specific issues of the peace process on which the NC and Baluwatar could form a common stance.
Khanal also sought the NC leaders´ opinion on the cabinet reshuffle that the Maoists had started demanding after they had worked out a formula for an internal patch-up among their rival factions. Prime Minister Khanal again met NC President Koirala and parliamentary party leader Ram Chandra Paudel at Koirala´s residence the next day.
The NC leaders basically said three things- they were eager to work with him on the peace process but he must act decisively; cabinet expansion was his prerogative alone; and the NC would continue to obstruct parliament until he resigned.
Prime Minister Khanal made his own political calculations: He thought the Maoists would compromise on peace process if he, backed by the NC, exerted enough pressure on them, and if there was an agreement on peace process and possibly on power sharing he could continue to head the consensus government "at least for some time". Baluwatar´s proposal was that leadership should be shared on a rotational basis among the three major parties and Khanal would lead the consensus government till the end of November.
Khanal miscalculated two things. First, the NC wasn´t willing to fully trust him and didn´t back him wholeheartedly. Secondly, the intra-party dynamics in the Maoist party had changed dramatically as it emerged from its month-long internal wrangling, something that Khanal had completely missed and even seasoned observers have failed to take note of.
There seems to be a return of trust between Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and his deputy Dr Babauram Bhattarai. Bhattarai, according to a close aide, kept a line of communications open with Dahal even during the heat of the bruising conflict and especially when the latter had started to feel nervous. "Chairman Dahal was worried that he would be removed as leader of the parliamentary party since the Bhattarai and Baidya factions had the numbers in parliament to do so. But it was Bhattarai who made concessions and played a role in safe-landing the party," he said.
Bhattarai also seems to have given Dahal an assurance that his leadership would not be challenged. Bhattarai has told his close aides that Dahal will remain in the party leadership for many years to come.
It´s not that there are none who have doubts about this newfound rapprochement between Dahal and Bhattarai. Even some of Bhattarai´s close aides regard things with suspicion and there are many in Dahal´s camp who scoff at the idea of a full reconciliation between the two leaders.
But the reality is that Dahal is already reciprocating Bhattarai´s goodwill. He proposed to NC leaders last Friday that Bhattarai should lead the next consensus government and invited the NC for meaningful negotiations on the peace process.
The future course of Nepali politics will now largely depend on how negotiations between the two major stakeholders of the peace process proceed ahead. Lack of agreement between the two can still save Khanal´s chair, at least for some time.
The gulf between the two largest parties in the Constituent Assembly over the peace process is still huge. Of the five contentious issues in the peace process-number of combatants to be integrated into the Nepal Army, standard norms for integration, rank harmonization, civilian package for rehabilitation of combatants and terms of reference of the proposed directorate in the Nepal Army (combat vs non-combat force)- the Maoists want agreement just on numbers and civilian package and categorization of combatants based on those opting for integration and those seeking rehabilitation before a national consensus government is formed under their leadership.
The NC, however, wants to resolve all these issues in a package deal. "We cannot leave aside the most sensitive issues of standard norms, rank harmonization, ToR of the proposed directorate and its leadership and just agree on the other issues to let the Maoists lead the government," said an NC leader involved in the negotiations.
Behind their respective positions lie the deep suspicions of these two parties toward each other.
The Maoists suspect that the NC wants to obstruct the peace process by demanding agreement on all the contentious issues right away, as such agreement, in its thinking, is not possible even in a few weeks.
The NC, on the other hand, is suspicious that the Maoists are trying to make some compromises on the peace process just to get back into government leadership.
"Once in government, they can drag out the negotiations on the rest of the issues unless we agree to sort them out on their terms," said an NC leader.
Addressing this trust deficit between the two is not going to be easy.
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