Kathmandu, Nov 30 (Inditop.com) With their ultimatum to the government failing to produce results, Nepal’s former Maoist guerrillas will start a fresh round of protests against the alliance government from Tuesday, culminating in a three-day general strike.
“Our sister organisations will be leading anti-government protests nationwide from Tuesday,” Maoist lawmaker and deputy chief of the party Narayan Kaji Shrestha Prakash told Inditop.
The first protests Tuesday will be led by students’ groups, followed by women, Maoist activists disabled during the 10-year People’s War and kin of people killed or missing during the civil war.
The street protests will continue till Dec 10 after which the former rebels have pledged to announce the formation of 13 autonomous states in a bid to restructure Nepal into a federal republic.
During an earlier protest too they had announced they would go ahead with the formation of new states but backed off after the ruling parties said such a gesture would go against the ongoing national task of drafting a new constitution.
The new constitution, to be promulgated in May 2010, has the responsibility of carving Nepal into new states on the basis of consensus among the major parties, as per the peace pact the Maoists signed with the major parties three years ago.
The ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist Monday once again warned the former guerrillas that any move to enforce unilateral state governments would violate the peace pact.
However, there are differences in the Maoists’ own organisations about the 13 states they are about to propose.
The top leaders of the party Monday asked the party’s standing committee to arbitrate after there were disputes about the boundaries of the 13 states the Maoists want to divide Nepal into.
Shrestha, however, said that the differences were not serious and would be ironed out.
From Dec 20, the Maoists have called a three-day general strike nationwide.
If that too fails to move the government, their chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda has indicated that his party would consider imposing an indefinite shutdown.
The Maoists are demanding an apology from President Ram Baran Yadav, who stopped them from sacking the chief of the army, and subsequently, triggered the fall of their eight-month government in May.
They have also given an option to the government, asking for a debate in parliament on the “unconstitutional” role played by the president. But the government has been steadfastly refusing the demands.
