UCPN (Maoist) in policy review bid

KATHMANDU, DEC 27 -
As part of its post- election policy review, the UCPN (Maoist) has started what it calls a serious soul searching to redraw its future ideological course aimed at regaining the lost glory.

Leaders said while the party would not immediately deviate from “the path of peace and constitution,” an official policy adopted by the party’s Chunwang meet in 2005, the ongoing discussions have opened much wider possibilities, including of adopting the path of “revolt” and bringing back the insurgency-era avatar of the party, especially the mass-based structures that mobilised thousands of whole-time cadres.

Though courting criticism, one of the options put under discussion is to give continuity to the policy of Chunwang meeting: consolidating peace and constitution through the Constituent Assembly (CA).

A meeting of the party’s Central Committee (CC) scheduled to begin on January 4 is expected to give a clearer picture about the future course as the meeting is set to delve primarily into reviewing the policy endorsed by the Chunwang meet. Some of the leaders have said the Chunwang policy was “defective” and hence the defeat in the election s.

Leaders such as Krishna Bahadur Mahara, Devendra Poudel, and Hemanta Prakash Oli argue that “the party has failed to complete the first phase of revolution, which was to draft a pro-people constitution” as envisaged by the Chunwang meet. The party, therefore, needs new way of thinking, the leaders said.

Adding to the ongoing policy discussions, Maoist ideologue Baburam Bhattarai has floated a new concept of “participatory democracy” to ensure better representation of cadres within the party and the people in the government.

Bhattarai, however, is yet to elaborate on the same.

Party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal is yet to come up with his views. His aides said Dahal is currently busy reviewing the party’s past policies and consulting leaders close to him. After the party’s split, Dahal has kept himself away from meeting other people, except for his close aides.  

Some Maoist leaders have warned Dahal that the party will become another CPN-UML if it continues to follow the model of parliamentary and electoral democracy.

Insiders said there is a general anxiety among Maoist leaders that the NC and the UML, who command two-thirds of the votes in the CA, could endorse the contentious issues through voting, instead of settling them through consensus. “This is a worrying fact and we are still not sure how we would go about handling that as we are discussing the party’s new policies,” said a Maoist leader.

“We will not shun the path of peaceful politics immediately but we need to clarify our policy on several issues. We should also bring immediate programmes to revamp the party,” said leader Haribol Gajruel.

The party is also preparing to review its policy of transforming it into a mass-based party as  decided at the seventh general convention held in February.

Maoist leaders said, as part of the decision, they would now adopt the cadre-based approach practiced during the insurgency period and revamp its organisational structure across the country.

The leaders maintained that the cadre-based nature of the party started eroding after it adopted a policy of welcoming everyone into the party organisation following its entry into the mainstream politics.

The party had a vanguard of thousands of full-time cadres who played a key role in strengthening the party’s organisation at the grassroots level during the insurgency period. The cadre-base structures were dropped for a number of reasons, including the high cost to manage the full-timers, and criticisms from both within and outside the country.

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