The political stability for which the people of Nepal have long waited, for the sake of peace and progress – and, lately, for the writing of a new constitution – has again proved elusive. By the middle of May, one more experiment was being attempted, with a new government coalition made up of or backed by all the political parties other than the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
]The Constituent Assembly elections in April 2008 gave the Maoists 38 percent in the House, and placed them in leadership of the government. Yet this opportunity to take the lead in writing the constitution, as well as in providing the 'change' that the people expected from them, was squandered. The distance the Maoists had to travel from the jungle to Singha Durbar, the government Secretariat, was perhaps too vast, and the time just not enough. Running a government proved to be somewhat more complex than engaging in armed revolt.
The election showing seemed to energise the Maoists to revert to the rigid dogma in their internal conclaves, even while Prime Minister Dahal and the powerful finance minister, party ideologue Baburam Bhattarai, made placatory noises to everyone else, especially the international community. Most importantly, the word that came out of a national convention held in November 2008 seemed to indicate that the Maoists were merely using the democratic institutions as a façade, with the fervour of satta kabja – the takeover of the state by force – undiminished. Any observer could have said that the Nepali people's own experience with democracy, as well as regional geopolitics, would not allow such a move towards a 'people's republic'. But the Maoist high command either did not understand or, more likely, it did not have the ability to convince its cadre.
Despite the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), signed between the Maoists and the other political parties in November 2006, stipulating the "integration and rehabilitation" of individual Maoist combatants, the Maoists began talking of en masse integration. More importantly, it seemed that their promises to this effect, made to the 20,000 combatants (verified by the United Nations) in the more than 25 cantonments throughout the country, was slowly converting into something from which they could not backtrack. This promise was there for all to see in a January 2008 'training video' made by Chairman Dahal to his commanders and combatants, leaked in early May, in which he speaks of "full integration" into the national army and subsequent plans for indoctrinating that force. He also refers to using exchequer money to buy arms, of breaking bones in order to win the then-upcoming elections, and how the Maoists had been successful in inflating their numbers during the verification exercise, from 7000-8000 to 20,000.