Out of patience in Nepal
By Somini Sengupta The New York Times
MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2006
NEW DELHI With all the howls of "Burn the crown" during the 12 days of nonstop pro-democracy protests in Nepal, the most obvious question is also the most ominous: Where will this all lead?
Will the country's politicians, surprised by the intensity of the demonstrations roiling Nepal, be able to keep control over popular outrage or to corral the ambitions of the Maoist rebel leaders who have given their blessings to the pro-democracy movement?
Will the palace unleash the Royal Nepalese Army against the protesters - and will the soldiers, who have thus far been relatively restrained, obey?
Most significant for the long run, will Nepal's deepening political crisis mean the end of the monarchy in the world's only Hindu kingdom, or will King Gyanendra ultimately manage to save his plumed crown?
"The beginning of the end," the newspaper columnist C.K. Lal called it. He predicted further suppression by the regime, followed by bigger and more intense street protests.
Whatever the future holds, the protests that began April 6, to mark the anniversary of the democracy movement that ushered in parliamentary rule in 1990, testify to a tectonic shift already under way in Nepal's political underpinnings.
First, while many ordinary Nepalis were once willing to give their king a chance to bring peace and stability to a country racked by a violent Maoist rebellion, they seem to have lost their patience.
Second, with discontent fueled by growing numbers of young people in the country, what was once an untouchable reverence for the monarchy seems to have vanished like clouds crossing the mountains.
Third, and most important, while protest calls once brought out party workers in certain politically active towns, this round of demonstrations has pricked a sense of outrage among commoners, including those who once said they were hardly interested in or downright disgusted by politicians.
Ordinary Nepalese - lawyers one day, a group of the disabled another day - have flooded the streets and risked police beatings for nearly two weeks. Government employees have staged work stoppages known in South Asian bureaucratese as "pen down" actions. Donations have been collected to treat the hundreds of protesters wounded by the police.
"People are realizing that the king will not deliver until we take to the streets," said Pramod Poudel, 30, a handicrafts exporter who said he once believed that Gyanendra's royal takeover in February 2005 could bring peace and stability to the country. Until last week, Poudel said, he had never considered it necessary to join a political protest.
"Now, it's high time for people like myself" to participate, he said.
At Model Hospital, Srichandra Pokhrel, 31, a trekking guide with a rubber bullet lodged in his right cheek, said he knew that the street protests only served to keep away the tourists who are vital to his livelihood.
Yet Pokhrel, a member of no political party, had been wounded in one demonstration last week and said he was ready to join the next one as soon as the rubber pellet was extracted from his cheek.
"If I make demonstrations and there is peace, then we can get business," was his reasoning. "First peace. Then is business."
In short, no longer are the street protests filled with the ranks of the political rent-a-crowd. "This is a huge pressure for political parties," Narayan Wagle, editor of the Kantipur, a Nepali- language daily, concluded in an interview. "They can't betray the public."
The Nepalese public has been amply betrayed by its leaders. In 2002, about a year after Gyanendra ascended to the throne following a mysterious palace massacre of his brother and the rest of his family, the country's elected Parliament was suspended. In October that year, Gyanendra fired the elected prime minister, postponed scheduled elections and then appointed a series of prime ministers of his choosing. In February 2005, the king seized total control of the government in what he called a necessary step to defeat the Maoists.
Friday, in his New Year's Day message, after protests in which at least 3,000 people had been arrested, hundreds wounded and 4 killed, the king extended his offer to hold a dialogue with the political parties and, eventually, elections. He said nothing about the protests, nor the protesters' demands to restore parliamentary rule. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has criticized the Nepalese police, saying they have used excessive force.
On Friday, an editorial in the state- run newspaper, Rising Nepal, offered the palace perspective on the week's events. Entitled "Normality Returns," it accused the political parties of linking arms with "Maoist terrorists" and plotting to "create chaos and incite violence." It commended the government for taking "strict measures to check such untoward events."
The king's New Year's message did little to quell negative public opposition. On Sunday, protest organizers estimated that 30,000 people had rallied in three separate neighborhoods in the capital. Travel agents held their own rally in Thamel, the famed tourist center of Katmandu.
Katmandu, the capital, squeezed by a strike that has blocked the movement of goods into the city for 12 straight days, began to have acute food and fuel shortages. There were long lines outside the gas stations The prices of staple foods, like tomatoes, garlic and lentils, have risen appreciably.
A U.S. official, reacting to the king's address Friday, urged the palace to release political prisoners and restrain its police forces.
"The king should act immediately to restore democracy," the official said. "If the king does not act immediately, the situation in Nepal will only worsen."
A senior Indian official described the king's Friday address as "too little too late."
"He has got to see there is no further point in insisting upon direct rule," the official said in New Delhi. "If he can just salvage his role as a ceremonial monarch that will be a huge relief - for him." Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the subject.
Perhaps the most ominous question is whether the Maoists, who have waged a cruel insurgency over the past decade, will stick to their promise to abide by the rules of parliamentary democracy. In a New Year's Day message of their own, they described the king's message as a "travesty to the country and the people."
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