Just when they appeared to have won the upper hand in their struggle against the Nepalese government, the country's Maoist guerillas have pledged to lay down their arms and take part in elections. The dramatic turn-around comes 11 years after the fighters of the Community Party of NepalMarxist Leninist (CPN-ML) began their uprising. They were demanding an end to the monarchy in Nepal and its replacement by a federal republic.
According to recent news reports the Maoists have now agreed to confine their fighters to armed camps and to have all their weapons locked away by the United Nations. The fighters will have to rely on handouts from the government to survive. As a quid pro quo the Nepalese army will lock up the same number of weapons and Prachanda says he wants health, education and land reform ministries confine its troops to barracks until after elections later this year. The reports do not say if the army will discontinue its practice of abducting and murdering people nor how much weaponry the troops will retain.
The CPN-ML, says THE TIMES, wants its fighters to be absorbed into the Nepalese army. This is not the traditional method of overthrowing the repressive apparatus of a reactionary state.
It is a good way of getting jobs for a lot of young armed men with a fairly low political level and few skills other than waging guerrilla war. The paper also comments that many of the fighters are not eligible to join the army because they are not yet 18.
Last year the Maoists brought Kathmandu to a standstill with strikes and demonstrations. They were mobilising thousands of people and bringing them into conflict with the police. It looked as if power was theirs for the taking.
The BBC reports that there were more street protests and strikes in December. This time they were called because the government appointed ambassadors and other high level positions without consulting the CPN-ML. The party was using mass pressure to get plum jobs in state apparatus.
The CPN-ML has agreed to take 73 seats in an interim parliament of 330. The assembly that will emerge after elections later this year will decide on whether or not to retain the monarchy. (This is the monarchy that looked like it was days away from being forced to flee the country.)
Party leader Prachanda says that he wants control of the health, education and land reform ministries in order that his organisation can start to implement parts of its programme. He adds that he will even accept a parliamentary decision to retain the monarchy.
From ultra-leftism to social democracy in six months. That is some shift. lished by a capitalist parliament and that Chavez's electoral mandate was justification for the use of such extraordinary powers.
Part of this enabling law will be the nationalization of key industries that had been privatized under previous governments, such as the telecommunications company CANTV and the electricity companies. "All of that which
privatised, let it be nationalised," said Chavez.
The government also plans to convert the minority stake the state oil company has in four Orinoco Oil Belt projects into a majority stake. The four Orinoco joint ventures are withUS companies Exxon/ Mobil, Conoco, and Chevron, France's Total, Britain's BP, and Norway's Statoil. Together these produce 600,000 barrels of oil per day, about 18% of Venezuela's total production.
During the swearing-in ceremony of his new cabinet