22 November, a Thursday, was to have been the date of deliverance for the people of Nepal. That was when the country would have gone in for the Constituent Assembly elections, and the restructuring of state and the wiping-out of historical injustices would have begun. Already twice postponed for logistical reasons, there was every possibility this time that the elections would be held. Key representatives of the restive Tarai population and the indigenous-ethnic peoples had made compromises on the promised 'mixed' electoral system, and the hope was that the hundred mutinies erupting all over the country would be addressed through sober reflection during the Constituent Assembly debates. Nepal was being privileged with the opportunity to write a new constitution: to learn from its own history as well as that of the region and the world, in order to produce a statute that would put a stamp on both the peace process and a democratic, representative, inclusive future.
But the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) pulled the electoral rug from under the people. Coming to the conclusion that they were not going to have a respectable showing at the polls, the Maoists first quit the government, then threatened to disrupt the election process. Ultimately, the leadership exploited the understanding of the other political parties that – as things stood – the peace process would not survive the Maoist departure from the polls. And so, the polity entered a state of suspended animation.
To press their advantage, the Maoists went outside the dictates of the interim constitution to call a special session of the interim parliament in mid-November, where they tabled two motions. The first was to abolish the monarchy and declare a republic immediately, through the interim parliament. The second proposed that a full-proportional electoral system be applied, instead of the mixed system. (The mixed system would have had half of the Constituent Assembly members elected through standard first-past-the-post candidatures, and half through a proportional system wherein the parties would receive seats in proportion to the votes they garnered countrywide, which would be allocated according to the proportion of communities in the population.) Both of these draft resolutions went against the agreement inherent in the interim constitution, as agreed to by the Maoists – the decision on the monarchy was to have been taken at the very first meeting of the elected Assembly, while the mixed system had been a workable compromise reflecting the push and pull of various political forces.
Of course, the Constituent Assembly itself has been a core Maoist demand for a decade, and formed the bedrock of the 12-point agreement of November 2005 that brought them into aboveground politics in the first place. The Assembly elections were also truly the mandate of the People's Movement of April 2006. But by November 2007, the Maoists were bent on reneging on all of their promises, and determined not to go in for the elections. They were searching for any way to scuttle the electoral ship, largely due to the simple fact that they would come out of the elections with only a fraction of the power they wield now, with 83 seats in the interim parliament and equal to the other two large parties in the house.