Aljazeera
As Nepal woke up this month from the slumber of Dashain holidays, a political bombshell sent alarm bells ringing across the country.
Nepal’s communist parties announced that they were forming a pan-leftist alliance, a combined communist force that would eventually become Nepal’s single communist party. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the Nepal Communist Party (United), the party of Nepal’s Maoist former rebels, said that they would contest the November general election as an alliance. The announcement comes as the Maoists are in a coalition government with the Nepali Congress, a centrist democratic party. Is it deceit, or just opportunism? Did China orchestrate this? Is Nepal heading towards becoming a communist state? Questions began to fly.
“Goal of a single Communist Party in Nepal is a goal of Communist Republic of Nepal in place of a Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal,” tweeted the former deputy prime minister, Bimalendra Nidhi of the Nepali Congress.
Rabindra Adhikari, a leader associated with the Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) party, tweeted: “Let there be a polarization of the left and the democratic parties. This is a global democratic exercise to form a majority government.”