Baburam Bhattarai’s bid to form a new force gaining pace

Online Khabar

Kathmandu, November 12. Leaders loyal to former prime minister and UCPN-Maoist Vice-Chair Baburam Bhattarai are holding a national gathering on forming a new force, in Kathmandu, on November 20.

The gathering will constitute a new force creation campaign committee, it is learnt. The loyalists are making preparations to make Bhattarai chief of the committee.

Presently, formation of district-level new force creation campaign committees is underway under the aegis of coordinators appointed for different provinces.

Province 1 has former lawmaker Lila Bhandari as coordinator, 2 has Ram Chandra Jha, 3 has Ganga Shrestha, 4 has Bamdev Chhetri, while provinces 5 and 7 have Devendra Parajuli and Nava Raj Subedi as coordinators.

In some districts, Bhattarai himself is campaigning, while in some other districts province in-charges and central leaders are undertaking the task.

According to leaders, participants at the gathering are announcing their resignation from respective parties, aside from creating new force creation campaign district committees and setting up the campaign offices.

After resigning from the UCPN-Maoist, Maoist leader Devendra Poudel has visited districts like Jhapa, Morang and Sunsari as part of preparations for the creation of such a force.

After district gatherings, the Bhattarai camp will hold a national gathering on November 20. A leader told Online Khabar that each coordinator will have to send 10 representatives at the gathering.

However, the gathering will not announce formation of a new force.

Rather, it will form a (national level) new force creation campaign committee.

After this, leaders associated with the campaign will set out for districts as part of a nationwide campaign, forming city and village committees as well as several sister organisations comprising intellectuals, indigenous nationalities, women and students.

At the same time, discussions will take place with leaders and activists from other parties on bringing them into the fold of the new force.

The initiative will cover leaders and cadres of parties like the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML, as well as former administrators, civil society leaders, industrialists and traders.

Declaring the party will take about two months, a leader involved in the campaign told Online Khabar. He said they will announce formation of the new force by organising a mass gathering in which more than 50,000 people will take part.

However, Maoist lawmakers will not immediately join the campaign.

None of the lawmakers joined in when 45 central leaders left the UCPN-Maoist recently. Forty-five lawmakers, including Top Bahadur Rayamajhi and Prabhu Shah, were with Bhattarai when he was in the Maoist fold.

Of them, Rayamajhi is not with the Bhattarai camp. He is in the government in capacity of Deputy Prime Minister and Energy Minister. And he has said in public that Bhattarai’s new force will come a cropper.

Other lawmakers, including Prabhu Shah, are said to be in constant contact with Bhattarai. According to a source, they will not resign and will remain within the Maoist fold.

Meanwhile, non-Maoist forces across the country are taking a keen interest in the campaign.

These forces are suggesting Bhattarai to not name his new outfit a ‘communist’ party and do away with Marxism-Leninism and Maoism.