Nepal’s Maoists have extended their stunning surge to victory in historic polls on the Himalayan nation’s political future, election officials said yesterday as the count passed the one-third mark.
A senior official of the former rebels said that the impoverished country was on the brink of sweeping change. This is expected to include the sacking of unpopular King Gyanendra and the abolition of a 240-year-old monarchy.
Of the 601 seats in a new assembly that will rewrite Nepal’s Constitution, 203 have been decided or were close to being allocated, with the ultra-republican Maoists taking 75 seats and leading in 34 others.
“We were partially surprised by the result. We knew we had a good support from the people, but we had not imagined the victory on this scale,” said the top Maoist official, Chandra Prakash Gajurel.
“Now the country is heading towards the new system, those who ruled this country for ages could still be a threat to this new change,” he said, in a clear warning to the embattled king and his allies.
“The biggest challenge could come from regressive forces who could try to disrupt the internal security situation of the country post-election,” he said.
The results released so far show the Maoists’ moderate main rivals left in the dust — although Gajurel said the ex-rebels would “try to work together with other parties to form a coalition government.”
“We will not choose the path of confrontation,” he said.
The elections on Thursday were a central plank of a 2006 peace deal under which the Maoists agreed to end a decade-long civil war — which left at least 13,000 people dead — and enter mainstream, multi-party politics.
That gamble appears to have paid off for the hardened insurgents — who are still classed as a “terrorist” organization by the US State Department but have drawn far more support than their rivals.
Nepal’s largest party, the centrist Nepali Congress, had won just 22 seats and was leading in 11 others, the election commission said, while the center-left Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) had won 21 seats and was leading in the count for 10 others.
Other parties had won, or were on track to win, 30 seats.
Media tallies and projections have shown a similar, stunning lead for the former rebels.
The ultra-leftists are pushing for the ouster of King Gyanendra and the abolition of the monarchy, something that now looks certain following the Maoists’ stunning showing at the ballot box.
King Gyanendra ascended the throne after a tragic and bizarre palace massacre in 2001 — in which the former king and much of the rest of the royal family were shot dead by a lovelorn, drunk, drugged and suicidal prince.
The monarch’s status sank in 2005, when he fired the government and seized absolute power to fight the Maoists — only to push mainstream parties into the arms of the rebels and enter a peace deal that led to Thursday’s elections.
Of the 601 seats in a new Constituent Assembly, 240 are appointed on a first-past-the-post system.
Another 335 assembly members will be elected by proportional representation — a counting method the Maoists are also expected to do well in. It could be several weeks before the full results for those seats are known.
The final 26 seats will be appointed by an interim government to be formed after the polls, in which the Maoists will also be well represented.
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