I found this interesting.
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http://www.nepalitimes.com/issue/336/MovingTarget/13245 The profound ignorance of our political leaders is occasionally visible, like when Madhab Nepal returned from a free trip to Scandinavia a while ago.
He had been invited to speak at a forum of old lefties, in his role as leader of the opposition and chief of the UML. In an unscripted moment, he told reporters how surprised he was when his Swedish hosts advised he shouldn’t tell anyone his party’s acronym meant ‘United Marxist-Leninist’; better say he was a ‘socialist’, to ensure the audience didn’t laugh him off the stage.
Here was a man in charge of the country’s second biggest party and an aspirant to the office of prime minister who didn’t have a clue that the movement he represented was universally discredited.
This would be astonishing anywhere but Nepal. Countless posters have recently appeared featuring the hammer and sickle. But the banner of the erstwhile USSR, which collapsed in chaos and ignominy, has been discarded as a symbol of oppression in Russia where it flew as the national flag for over 70 years. That it flies in Nepal indicates how wrong our once-cherished time warp has gone.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism has proven to be its own worst enemy, having failed miserably as a system of governance wherever attempted. Being anti-communist nowadays is like being anti-Flat-Earth Society—why bother. The Hand isn’t anti-communist, simply anti-failure.
World trends happen for good reasons, no matter the tired mantra our local ideologues repeat that communism failed elsewhere because it was never applied scientifically (or some such nonsense).
Nepal’s distance from the rest of the world, once so appealing, has turned into the Maoists greatest ally. It serves their interest that the majority remain ignorant of such inconvenient historical facts, and somehow Nepal’s ‘other-worldliness’ allows them to get away with it.
Betting the country’s future on a horse that has already lost the race is foolish. Nonetheless, being out of step with the rest of the world could still be used to our advantage, as it affords Nepal the unique opportunity of learning from the mistakes of others, instead of haplessly repeating them.