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Maoist Rebel To Lead Nepal

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The New York Times

Published: August 16, 2008

KATMANDU, Nepal - The leader of the decade-long Maoist rebellion in Nepal was finally elected prime minister Friday, after four months of political wrangling. His victory sets the stage for the former rebel's toughest challenge: how to uplift the lives of 27 million people in one of the poorest countries in the world at a time of soaring food and fuel prices.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, who goes by Prachanda, "the fierce one" in Nepali, won more than two-thirds of 577 votes cast in the Constituent Assembly on Friday.

His election had been expected since April, when the Maoists won a majority in a special assembly elected both to draft a new constitution and to form a government. For four months, however, Nepali Congress, the nation's oldest party, with a long list of grievances against the Maoists, blocked their bid to lead a government of national consensus.

The election of the prime minister opens the way to establish a democratically elected government in Nepal. That will be a milestone in resolving the decade-long civil war, a conflict that claimed the lives of an estimated 13,000 people before it ended with a peace accord in 2006.

The Maoists already have achieved their main goal, the ending of 239 years of Hindu monarchy. At its first session, in May, a constituent assembly declared Nepal a federal republic.

The former king, Gyanendra, the world's last Hindu monarch, was forced to vacate the main palace here and live as a commoner.

A senior Maoist leader, Baburam Bhattarai, said Friday that political leaders of the party would no longer hold positions in its armed wing, the People's Liberation Army. He also pledged that the party would return seized property to its owners.

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