Nepal - CPN-M avers Dahal is its prime target

KATHMANDU, NOV 03 – The CPN-Maoist has officially decided to intensify its anti-election campaign targeting UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal as a measure to obstruct the scheduled election. Leaders say general strikes coinciding Dahal’s visit enforced in eastern hills, Madhes and West in the past two weeks were in line with the party policy. The party’s reading is that nobody other than Dahal can defer the Constituent Assembly polls.
The party has been enforcing bandas in all the places that Dahal visits. “Dahal is our target because he is the main obstacle to national consensus. So he was and will remain the obvious target of our anti-election activities,” party Vice-chairman CP Gajurel told the Post. Dahal played a crucial role in the formation of the technocratic government led by Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi and in the decision to deploy the Army for election security. “Dahal is the prime target of the 33-party alliance,” he said. It was Dahal who proposed a non-partisan government during the UCPN (Maoist)’s seventh general convention in Hetauda, said Gajurel.
The party imposed a general strike in Chitwan on Saturday, while western districts were shut on Friday to disrupt Dahal’s pre-scheduled trip. Some fringe parties in the 33-party alliance have reservations about the CPN-Maoist ’s one-sided decision to zero in attacks on Dahal. They have said there should be equal attacks on all the leaders of the major parties including the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML since they have “equal role in sidelining them from the election process”. Khagendra Makhim, general secretary of the Federal Democratic National Forum—an umbrella organisation of Limbu, Rai and Tamang parties—said his party’s anti-election activities are targeted at the entire ‘four-party political syndicate’, not only Dahal. “They are equally responsible for the current political crisis and our struggle is against the syndicate itself. It’s incorrect to target just an individual where there is a fault in the whole system,” said Makhim.
Pasang Sherpa of the Social Democratic Party said the confrontation between the poll-opposing forces and election candidates is inevitable but the CPN-Maoist should not use the protest as a matter of personal enmity against an individual. Despite the protest, CPN-Maoist leaders said, there have been efforts to settle the crisis politically. Sources said that the party’s top leadership is in talks with the government and the major parties to defer the polls and seek other possibilities.