The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), two years after abandoning guerrilla warfare to participate in aboveground politics, now finds itself set to lead the government. On 10 April, the former rebels received an astonishing 36.6 percent of the seats in the Constituent Assembly, which will double as a parliament as it writes Nepal's new constitution. The Maoist win has surprised many, more so for its wide margin. Previously, even the more generous predictions in the national press had seen the party coming in a close third, behind the mainstream Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist).
The most prominent reason for the surprise, even dismay, among Nepal's liberals arises from the feeling that, at this point in history, today's CPN (Maoist) cannot be separated from its recent past of violence. Reasons offered for the Maoist win thus seek to redeem the people of their 'erroneous' choice. Surely a good number of votes for the Maoists were 'votes for peace' by those who suffered during the conflict and were worried by the former rebels' threats to take up the gun again if they did not gain enough seats. Surely, too, intimidation tactics in the run-up to the elections played a role in determining the outcome.
Despite the temptation to give these fear-based factors heavy emphasis, however, to do so would be all too easy. While the second explanation seeks to dismiss the Maoist victory, the first seeks to limit both the significance of the victory and the winning party's mandate. Indeed, the manner in which the election results are interpreted during this post-poll period will have important implications for how that mandate is understood. For Nepal's elite to try to explain away the outcome is for it to pass up an opportunity for serious reflection on the difference in aspirations between itself and the majority of the country's population.
For while the Maoists have been a violent force for much of their existence, they cannot be understood by the parameter of violence alone. The fact is that the CPN (Maoist) brings to Nepal's political mainstream many commitments. It must be deduced from its victory, for instance, that the liberalism offered by the other two large parties, the Congress and UML, was not appealing enough to a large section of Nepalis. The Maoists campaigned on a promise to bring redress to all manner of the oppressed – women, Dalits and ethnic minorities, in addition to the working class. To overlook the importance of this commitment is not only to deny the Maoists their mandate to take decisive action in favour of these marginalised sections, but, more importantly, to deny the necessity of quick and substantive rectification of present-day and historical inequalities.