After a Year of "Loktantra" - Is it finally time for a Democratic Alliance?

Originally posted on April 25, 2007, the title of this writing requires an upgrade to the following - "Two years after Loktantra, it is too late for a Democratic Allaince."

Excerpts:

"To the Maoists' credit, they successfully played on the desperation of disillusioned personalities while maintaining a silent (yet emotionally charged) dedication to their original, strategic end-goals (which are anything but democratic). With help from their counterparts in India, an arrogant King without a plan, and above all, with assistance from the very groups that today, refuse to revisit their own rationale, the Maoists forged their much coveted SPAM alliance...."

"The SPA exhibited no moral inhibitions when teaming up with an organization that members of the SPA leadership themselves had termed terrorists. At the time, the King and his band of jokers were a much bigger threat in the minds of SPA leaders; the royal threat was sufficient to overlook every rational, logical (even moral) sense of duty the SPA leadership had towards guaranteeing a viable future for not just themselves, but the entire country..."

"The disillusioned intellectual classes need to urgently come to terms with the fact that it is not the mainstream that is democratizing the Maoists but the Maoists who are fully mobilized and well-positioned to define the mainstream. Which other political group in Nepal has claim to its own media outlets, its own militia, its own army, its own legal system, and to top it off, multiple sources of income (of which one is funding from the very government the Maoists are systematically dismantling)?..."

"It is anyone's guess as to which direction Nepal's polity is leaning and equally alarming how easily a central committee member of the "invincible" Nepali Congress was shoed off stage in the heart of Kathmandu. Does Ram Chandra Poudel and the intellectual sycophants that surround his party finally understand who truly owns the republican agenda? If a leader of Mr. Poudel's stature can be prevented from speaking, how well does the Nepali Congress expect its district and village level cadre to perform during upcoming elections?..."

"The challenge for non-leftist groups is to unite without jeopardizing the on-going sham of a peace process - a process that with each passing day, appears increasingly like a tool at the Maoists' disposal to forward their strategy under the façade of international legitimacy..."

http://nepaliperspectives.blogspot.com/2007/04/after-year-of-loktantra-is-it-finally.html