In the aftermath of the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)'s sixth plenum, held in late November, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the party's chairman, claimed that the exercise had been a grand success. 'It is absolutely wrong to say that we have come out with the same, confusing political line,' he said, blaming the media for spreading falsehoods. For Dahal, the week-long plenum, held in the village of Palungtar in central Nepal, where over 6000 cadres expressed their opinions, was 'historic, extraordinary and a great exercise of internal democracy'. He said internal disputes were natural in any vibrant communist party, and that the leadership had come out of the experience with new vigour and enthusiasm, having resolved all intra-party policy disputes.
Party insiders say the reality is just the opposite, however, suggesting that the top leadership continues to be divided over the party line, except that now the divisions are public and permeate the party rank and file. The issue at hand is not so much the internal power struggle but the direction of the party and the ongoing peace process. Unable to reconcile their longstanding ideological differences, the three leaders presented separate political documents during the plenum, none of which was endorsed – a first for Dahal, and a situation that thrust the party into ideological confusion. In fact, the ideological divide among the three central leaders – Chairman Dahal, Senior Vice-Chairman Mohan Baidya and Vice-Chairman Baburam Bhattarai – has become so wide that the party now faces an imminent danger of splitting.
A month after the Palungtar plenum, on December 15, the party Central Committee (CC), bowing to the resurgent hard-line camp led by Baidya, adopted the tactical line of 'people's revolt', a program aimed to 'seize' state power. In addition, the party identified both India and 'domestic reactionaries' as the party's principal enemies. The latest move of the party has, however, threatened party unity and severely affected the prospect of completing the peace process.
The root of the current debate goes back to the mid-1990s. In 2005, the Maoists decided to forge an alliance with the parliamentary political parties against the monarchy and push for the formation of a federal democratic republic at a full CC meeting in Chunwang, in western Nepal. This party line is widely credited to Bhattarai. At that time, Baidya was in jail in West Bengal, detained by Indian authorities while in Siliguri for eye treatment. Since the 'Chunwang line' was adopted in his absence, Baidya has been attempting to turn this process around, terming it – and the outlines of the current peace process – a deviation from the ideological goals of revolution.