Endlessly pestered with requests to arrange an 'exclusive' interview with his boss on the campaign trail, Pratap came up with several ways to evade the media: stop picking up the phone, say the day's schedule was not yet ready, say that there was just no time, or offer ambiguous responses to keep stubborn journalists waiting. The personal secretary of the Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal may have hoped to have an easier time after the polls; but, if anything, his workload doubled. As early results made it clear that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) would emerge with the single largest electoral result, a harassed Pratap told restless reporters that the chairman would make a statement once he won the Kathmandu-10 constituency.
The party machinery had turned its attention towards relishing the moment of victory. On 11-12 April, Kathmandu turned red. The Maoist party flag seemed to be everywhere. The cadre was swirling, screaming with joy and aggression, taking out jubilant bijay julus and telling anyone who cared to listen that they had won. For its part, the leaders in their victory rallies were celebrating in the same style as politicians would anywhere else in Southasia.
Sitting on a makeshift platform at the counting centre in the Baneshwor part of the capital, the Maoist leaders greeted Dahal, long known as 'Prachanda', with garlands. They also smeared him liberally with – what else? – red powder. His face barely visible, the chairman, who wants to be Nepal's first president, made a speech. It was a mix of offering hope ("This is a new chapter; Maoists will lead the path to change"), reaching out ("We recognise new global and regional realities. We want to be friends with our neighbours. Let's all work together to build a naya Nepal"), and definitive vindication ("We told you we would win").
The Maoists can rightfully feel vindicated. During the run-up to the polls, conversations inside Kathmandu's Ring Road revolved around how the CPN (Maoist) would probably come in a distant third. At that point, the worry was what the party would do in such a scenario. As it turned out, the Maoists won a staggering 120 out of 240 direct constituency seats, and are expected to win another 100 or so seats out of 335 under the proportional-representation system (see box). In the direct elections, meanwhile, the Nepali Congress was a distant second with 37 seats; the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) won just 33 seats. However, the big national parties made up some lost ground in the proportional system; the Congress might win about 72 seats, while the UML will come in close with 69 seats or so. The Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum (MJF), in the Tarai, won 30 seats, while smaller Madhesi parties won around 13 seats, but did less well under the proportional system than either the Congress or UML. The Madhesi parties can expect to have more than 65 seats in the house, indicating a massive shift in political representation that has been unnoticed due to the focus on the Maoist win countrywide.