Maoist ministers in cabinet raise hopes, cause fears
Kathmandu (AsiaNews) – Five Maoist ministers have joined Nepal’s interim government. Some members of the country’s various religious groups welcome the move which raises hopes that peace will at last break out after ten years of civil war. It does not however allay fears about Maoists’ real intention.
The 21-member cabinet of Prime Minister Girja Prasad Koirala, 82, now has five Maoists ministers (Information, Local Development, Planning and Labour, Forestry, and Women and Children). Its main task will be to lead the country until elections are held in June. The new assembly will then draft a new constitution for the country.
Speaking to AsiaNews analyst Ram Ekbal Choudary said that the appointment of the new government marks the “end of 238 years of royal government,” a period now relegated to the country’s history books.” But everyone is still asking what the Maoists will do.
Gochan Tamang, a Buddhist monk, told AsiaNews that there is “optimism” about peace after a “decade-long blood bath”, but he is sceptical whether the Maoists will be able to rid themselves of their “culture of force, of imposing their will.”
“I know how they extorted ‘donations’ from Buddhist monasteries where monks barely survive on people’s charity,” he explained. “I am afraid that they will loot the state the same way.”
In any event, the “people of Nepal have never received help from the state,” he explained. The public purse has been regularly looted by the army and powerful groups under the royal government or the weak democracy of the 1990s.
“Nepali citizens want to be left alone to live their lives,” he said, free from the violence and extortions of the Maoists.
Nirmal Thulung, a Christian from the Good Hope Church in eastern Nepal, said that he was “happy” that the Maoists accepted to join the political process, even though in his opinion “their only goal is to get power.”
“Still through them Nepal became a secular state. At least they opposed the ruling Hindu elite and their presence prevents the re-emergence of a theocratic state which has always been repressive,” he said.
Pawan Pathak, a Hindu priest, agrees. Maoists helped turn Nepal into a secular state and remove the king and his cronies who “used the pretext that Nepal was a Hindu kingdom to protect their own interests” with the “king claiming that he was the reincarnation of lord Vishnu.”
We must be vigilant, he said, because the danger of Hindu religious sectarianism is still high “as is the case in neighbouring India,” and could harm the rights of believers of other religions.
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06/04/2006
