Simple Convictions is a record of Girija Prasad Koirala´s thoughts between the takeover by King Gyanendra in October 2002 and the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord in November 2006. These were tumultuous times in the annals of modern Nepali politics, and they provided the ageing Koirala, 85 by the time of the CPA, with the opportunity to fight the finest fight of a politician: to bring down an autocracy and pull a violent insurgency into the arena of open politics. Acknowledged the leader of the People´s Movement. of April 2006, Koirala succeeded in what he terms repeatedly in these pages as "the last struggle of my life".
For having served the longest as prime minister in the period of democracy after the first People´s Movement of 1990, Koirala made the most mistakes as well as the largest number of enemies. Amidst the polarisation that marked the polity´s first decade of open political competition, Koirala played favourites and consolidated his position, much to the chagrin of his peers. He maintained loyalists rather than advisors, and as a player contributed to the confusion and lack of delivery of competitive politics, which allowed the Maoist rebellion to spread and the king in his palace to develop aspirations. As three-time prime minister in the dozen years of democracy till October 2002, he shares in the blame of the failure of government delivery and politicisation of the administration.
Yet, as the Maoists and royalists developed ambitions and the Kathmandu elites and intelligentsia escalated their attacks on the politicians and parties, this writer had maintained that history would treat the Koirala better than the contemporary observers and analysts. And that is how matters seem to have unfolded, especially since the new king Gyanendra´s ´creeping takeover´ began on 4 October 2002. Within a few years, the very Maoists who had regarded Koirala as a most despised adversary were looking to him to deliver them from their wayward ´ revolution´ into the field of open politics, and it was Koirala´s unrelenting stand against Gyanendra that made him the pivot in the fight against ´royal regression´. Meanwhile, Koirala became the rallying point for the Seven Party Alliance as soon as the various political leaders were done with being co-opted by the vainglorious Gyanendra.
