4/24/2006

Nepal: Communists winning

The King of Nepal has agreed to the primary demand of the united opposition, that includes political parties and the Maoist terrorist who struck today. The restoration of the lower is no doubt calculated to split the parties into those that will be satisfied with moderate demands and those that will will want to turn Nepal into the new Cambodia.

If previous revolutions are any guide, the King should either get the hell out now, or strike very hard against the Maoists. Louis XV or Napoleon would fire grape shot into the crowds and survive, Louis XVI would order his troops not to shoot and watch them get torn to pieces before he eventually was executed in public and his family tortured and killed.

Elections don't work when one side promises to exterminate the losers and the only rational course is to stop the election. It's bad and may not improve for some time.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The king is hardly Mr Benign. Perhaps if he'd been less autocratic and murderous, he'd have less people clamouring for his death.

Blognor Regis said...

Do you remember the bizarre massacre at the Royal Palace in Kathmandu a couple of years ago? Apparently the prince who was to become King Gyanendra happened to be convienently at the other end of the country at the time. It is more than just a little suspicious and the Nepalese know it. No wonder this king is not popular. The trouble is he might bring down the monarchy completely and do the Maoists's work for them.

Blognor Regis said...

Do you remember the bizarre massacre at the Royal Palace in Kathmandu a couple of years ago? Apparently the prince who was to become King Gyanendra happened to be convienently at the other end of the country at the time. It is more than just a little suspicious and the Nepalese know it. No wonder this king is not popular. The trouble is he might bring down the monarchy completely and do the Maoists's work for them.

MSS said...

The King appears to have succeeded in doing exactly what you say: Dividing the parties that will be satisifed with moderate steps from the Maoists.

The problem is that, precisely because these parties are not mass-based parties, he may have driven the mass protesters away from the parties and towards the Maoists.

It is not as if the Nepali state has not been striking hard at the Maoists for some time. That was his justification for assuming direct rule. He has failed. I can't see the crisis being resolved without the king's adbication.

As for the "new Cambodia," presumably India would intervene militarily before that could happen.