Is Maoist the richest Party in Asia?

-Dwarika Pd. Shrestha

 

After they came out to the mainstream of politics by shunning the path of violence, about two decades ago, the Maoist Party emerged as the largest political party in the Constituent Assembly (CA) all through the 4 years. The party also led two coalition governments within the period of 4-5 years after the abolition of monarchy through the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly.  The first government was formed under the leadership of Puspa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda as the Prime Minister, and the second under the Premiership of Dr. Babu Ram Bhattarai and enjoyed the power for more than two years. In the meantime, there was a hearsay that the Maoist Party has become the richest political party in the country. Many people also thought, “the Maoist Party of Nepal is the richest political party in Asia?”

 

In fact, two decades was not a long time either in the history of Politics. The party was formed two decades ago after losing the second general election, when a faction of Janamorcha Nepal led by Babu Ram Bhattarai submitted 40 point demands to then Nepali Congress Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and went to Jungle to wage a decade long war. Many clashes, fights and many sort of crimes, lootings, dacoits, killings (about 15000 people reportedly lost their lives), took place during the period of two decades. Many senior citizens missed successors in their family, many women became widow, hundreds of thousands of young work force of the country were sold out in the neighbor countries and abroad and the like. The Maoist occupied the excuse for the happenings because that was a part of political revolution, they thought. The donation and extortion drives were yet to discontinue. Therefore, many sort of such evidences conducted by the Maoist leader/s and the activist/s to enrich themselves were read and listened through most of the media reports in the last four years till present.

Nearly 8 months ago, the leader of the Maoist Mr. Prachanda had announced that he could spend Rs.2.5 billions to help add more muscles to YCL to back the Maoists’ move. It was obviously true that many people working for Maoist Party were ignored though they were accused as murderer, bribery and other charges as per the Supreme Court’s decision that has already announced certain amount of punishment and fine against them. People cannot ignore the scene they had seen in the Army Pavilion, Tundikhel where the top Police officer and Bal Krishna Dhungel, the former Constitution Assembly member, accused as a murderer by the Supreme Court sitting shoulder to shoulder to observe the public show presented by Army officials in a public festival ‘Ghode Jatra’.

 Maoist set up Investigation Committee:

In an interaction programme held in News 24 channel, a few days ago one of the Maoist commander (reportedly) Mr. Lokendra Bahadur Bista Magar while sharing his idea with the Interviewee of the Channel said that a committee was set up by Maoist party under his leadership to investigate about the property accumulation case of the Maoist Party member/s. Many of the leaders and activists of the Party have accumulated certain amount of properties during the time of their revolutionary activities. The collection of lands, homes and properties during the time was supposed to distribute equally to all the activists as per their order of command. A question was also raised in the discussion that ‘why not Mr. Prachanda should face the faith like some former ministers like Khum Bahadur Khadka and J P Gupta, who are experiencing the jail service at the moment?”. These and some other events like that were read in medias these days state that the Maoist were really belong to billions of rupees and is the richest Party in Asia. Only Prachanda belongs to more than 30/40 billions of rupees plus other properties, it is reported. It was also believed that Mr. Prachanda, who called himself as “not less than the President of the Country” can’t adjust in the building worth less than 20 crores of rupees, because of raised up of his living standard”. They also discussed about how the Committee could justify a balance between two different groups of Maoists; one a group settled down well with costly building and other means of resources in Kathmandu, Pokhara, Butwal and other places and another that returned home in their village/s  with empty bag/s and gone to third countries to earn their lively hood after long time involvement in Maoist activities?

 

There was the Govt. unit to look after the investigation cases. Again, “since the Government as well as the Army was under the Maoist Party, they did not ask the government unit to look after the case”. “They could ask the Govt. Unit to take care of the case, if their effort could not solve it,” the Maoist Commander Lokendra Bahadur Bista Magar added.

 “Now my turn…”

In the meantime, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Narayan Kazi Shrestha, a leader of the Maoist Party (Dhal group) has made a public announcement twice that no one should give any amount as donation for helping the political party or anything else. The donation crisis caused locking off many industries, factories, restaurants and other enterprises. The illegal practice could not stop because many of the politician/s and the leader/s were an integral share holder/s of the outcome. The present active group in raising donation was reportedly led by Kiran Vaidya, Maoist. So the govt. security also ignore the incident though they happened to present eventually on the spot at the moment. Besides donation, their another collection was Commission, a term of a certain amount of the total investment in percentage basis that was supposed to be allocated to offer to the agent/s who was directly or indirectly, legally or illegally involved in it, in many of the cases, while undertaking any sort of project related with development works. Therefore, the Donation and the Commissions were some of the factors that raised the cost of development work/s and led a negative impact in the works.

 

Commission Confrontation:

The Commission also caused a fraction in the Maoist group conceptually. There was a street fight between Maoist versus Maoist a few days ago. One was called as Prachanda Dahal group and another was Babu Ram Bhattarai group. Each of them (any one of the two groups) wanted to lead the team while raising the Commission from any sort of development works or fixing the market price of the consumers’ goods.

Like leaders like activists:

In fact, each and everyone was crazy for money in the world. The political leaders had all access to do any thing they want either to earn money or something else. They were more money crazy than any other. After they became a leader the political activist/s even forget the priority of their duty that should be served for the sake of the country and the people. Nepali people love peace, freedom, security, and good education system. Let every one could live here as a good citizen of the country.