June 20, 2006

Pall over Nepal
 

Nepal is in an unprecedented state of flux. For the first time, Maoists are part of an interim government as the royal family becomes increasingly isolated. Eric Ellis reports.

Crown Prince Paras of Nepal is not a living god to trifle with, especially after he’s had a big session on the sauce.

Johnnie Walker Black Label is his preferred tipple and when word courses around the bars and restaurants of Kathmandu’s fashionable Babar Mahal Revisited, a restored 19th-century Rana palace, that the 35-year-old Paras is drunk again astride his black Harley-Davidson and cruisin’ with his thuggish outriders, down come the shutters on nightspots. Some clubs employ Paras-watchers to keep an eye on the carpark, lest the royal posse shows up … no one wants to call the interior decorators in again tomorrow.

Nepalis know that Paras has form. He’s been accused of killing three men, including popular folk singer Praveen Gurung, who challenged Paras when rescuing a woman the prince was manhandling outside a club. Paras ran over him a few times in his 4WD then drove back into his palace. A half-hearted police investigation took no action.

Violence seems to run in the Shah dynasty. Paras is only heir to the throne because his cousin Dipendra slaughtered 10 family members, including himself, in the “Blood Against the Snows” regicide in Narayanhity Palace five years ago. “It was no mystical mountain Shangri-la kingdom of smiling people anymore,” says Kunda Dixit, editor of the feisty Nepali Times.

But Nepalis haven’t seen a lot of Paras or his equally unpopular father, King Gyanendra, since April. “The 19 Days of Agitation”, the people’s almost-revolution, rendered Gyanendra impotent, Nepal’s politics sclerotic and the humiliated royals hostage to their palaces. If Paras were to mount his Chopper and head out to party these days, he’d likely be killed at the hands of a mob.

It was a close-run thing for the royals. As waves of protesters advanced up Durbar Marg to the palace gates demanding loktantra, or "total democracy", Gyanendra had the helicopter engines whirring on the palace lawns. The Indian ambassador was by his side laying out the home truths; resist the people and in 24 hours you’ll probably be dead if you don’t get on the bird. Or step down and go into exile. A massive mid-afternoon hailstorm broke the tension and the superstitious king saw a sign and allowed parliament’s restoration in return for his family staying in Nepal.

An unwieldy seven-party governing coalition, which promptly stripped the king of power, is now trying to craft a new constitution. “The man did not have the intellectual or organisational skills to run a police state,” says Kanak Dixit, who like brother Kunda, is one of Nepal’s leading journalists.

The royals have been reduced to ridicule. Royal Nepal Airlines occupies one of the tallest buildings in Kathmandu but the tenant is now just Nepal Airlines, the world "Royal" painted over. On the high barbed-wired walls of the palaces are posted the blood-soaked hammer-and-sickle propaganda of Nepal’s Maoist insurgents and an image of their Che-like commander Prachanda, who seems to be pressing on this spectacular Himalayan realm a communist republic Cambodia’s Pol Pot might recognise.

It's not Year Zero in Nepal but as few in the high-caste Brahmin establishment want to admit, that date seems to be inching ever closer. The political elite fiddle while Nepal simmers, just fine for the Maoist "guerillas in the mists", also Brahmin-led who’ve killed thousands of Nepalis in a 10-year insurgency. Prachanda summoned his cadre to Kathmandu last week and about 300,000 Nepalis attended their biggest rally yet - the Maoists’ first in the capital. Businesses were told to shut down for the day, and to contribute a “revolutionary tax” for party coffers. Nepal’s twitchy military, now under the notional control of 85-year-old Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, kept their distance at Maoist direction. The rally was noisy yet peaceful and superbly organised, sending a powerful message to uncommitted Nepalis used to years of misgovernance, casteism and corruption from their leaders. It also sends a message to Washington, Delhi and Beijing, none of which wants a red Nepal. Prachanda didn’t show at his rally, allowing the momentum to build.

Then, last Friday, a shock that gave Nepalis both hope and apprehension. Prachanda made his first appearance in the capital, for talks with Koirala, who seems to have accepted Nepal’s political reality that the Maoists control 60% of the country. By the end of the day, parliament had been dissolved, Prachanda’s Maoists were for the first time part of an interim government, ahead of elections still to be called.

Meanwhile, a seething Gyanendra plots from his gilded cage. As the world’s only Hindu monarch, he’s been cosying up to India’s Hindu chauvinist party, the BJP. Perhaps news hasn’t reached the palace that the BJP, too, have been eclipsed, in Delhi where the power in Nepal really lies.

Through the turmoil, Nepalis somehow muddle through. The ego-charged foreign mountaineers and trekkers who Nepal relies on - along with the remittances of the country’s expatriate maids, oil workers and Gurkha soldiers - to keep its near-collapsed economy ticking over, aren’t the ones to ask. The Lincoln Halls and Sue Fears have dominated the recent headlines. This season is one of Everest’s worse, claiming 12 lives so far.