"It has brought new hope," says Krishna Prasad Sitaula, leader of the Nepali Congress. Perhaps it has. After long, people saw their political leaders working together instead of fighting, blaming and threatening each other. [break]
The mechanism has created a space for the two major protagonists of the peace process-- Girija Prasad Koirala and Pushpa Kamal Dahal-- to come together and talk about what kind of legacy they want to leave behind.
This is especially poignant for Koirala -- 86 and ailing, this is his last chance to salvage his legacy. His recommendation for the Nobel Peace Prize may also inspire him to do his bit.
But Koirala is a small factor in this stalemate, if at all, and he will have only a nominal role in breaking the gridlock. Actually, he will just provide the guardianship, without much influence on the process or in the end-result.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal is unmistakably the man who can make or break the peace process. But no one knows how he sees this mechanism or what purpose he wants to use it for.
One thing became clear when the three leaders met this morning --he wasn´t interested in just writing the constitution and concluding the peace process as proposed by Koirala.
"To do so," Dahal argued, "the present deadlock should be broken." At his insistence the statement signed by the three top leaders included wording that the mechanism will also discuss ways to resolve the political impasse.
Dahal´s eyes are clearly set on Baluwatar. And UML Chairman Jhala Nath Khanal might be game with that. But Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal is not. When he met Koirala on Wednesday, just a few minutes after Khanal and Dahal also met him, Nepal argued that the mechanism cannot and should not discuss the life of the current government.
Minister for Information and Communications and Prime Minister Nepal´s confidant, Shankar Pokharel, downplayed the government´s worries over the mechanism. "Our only concern is that the mechanism should not evolve into a body to control the government because that is not permissible constitutionally and legally." UML strongman Khadga Prasad Oli, for his part, has directly criticized the formation of the mechanism.
Amidst such suspicion in the party that leads the government, what the mechanism will achieve remains a big question.
But this mechanism offers a glimmer of hope for an entirely different reason also: It provides Maoist Chairman Dahal a face-saving opportunity to make a U-turn from an exceedingly extremist political course he seems inclined to take. There are worrying indications that Dahal wants to stir up an ultra-nationalist (read anti-Indian) fervor to rally his frustrated cadres and so-called "nationalist" forces.
But make no mistake, Dahal has in him elements of both shrewd pragmatism and brute opportunism. If he realizes that ultra-nationalism is going to boomerang on him and that the high-level mechanism may provide him an opportunity, however small, to get back into power, he may start to play his cards accordingly.
Dahal himself has come back to the negotiating table. The high-level mechanism can engage him constructively over the six-fold agenda that a taskforce has prepared for negotiations and offer him real chances of power-sharing if he works sincerely to conclude the peace process and write the constitution.
The mechanism´s success will depend upon whether it can make Dahal realize that he has no chance of getting back into power before the constitution is agreed (though not necessarily promulgated) and the peace process is concluded, but he will have a legitimate claim after.
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