Is unity among all leftist parties possible?

Yuba Nath Lamsal

Lately, it seems that some communist leaders are slowly reckoning with the fact that they are on the wrong side of history. And if recent developments are any indication, they are on the path of correcting their past missteps and irrationality. Perhaps forced by circumstances, the five Maoist communist parties have at least agreed to forge a united front for a working unity on some common agendas and issues. Four of these five parties are the ones which were once together in a single party when the Maoists had launched an armed insurgency. Now again these parties are in the process of a broader left unity.

When they were united in the past, their combined strength was so strong that no other party in the country could ever match their might. The UCPN-Maoist had won 121 seats out of 240 under the first-past-the post system of the election held in 2008.  But the UCPN-Maoist won only 26 out of 240 in the election held in November last year. The UCPN-Maoist claimed that conspiracy and rigging were primarily responsible for its defeat in the election. It may be true to some extent but not in totality. The rigging alone was not the sole reason for its humiliating defeat.  Internal problems, contradictions in principles and action as well as deviation on certain issues are more responsible for this poor showing of the UCPN-Maoist in the election than the external conspiracy.

On the ideological front too, the party committed mistakes one after another. There had been serious mistake and shortcoming in the process and decisions concerning the army integration. The party gave up its agenda and stance one after another whereas it failed to deliver anything when it was in the government. In foreign policy front and more particularly in relation with India, too, the party slowly but surely gave up its earlier stance. As a revolutionary communist party, the UCPN-Maoist had raised high the banner of patriotism and national liberation movement in the past. However, in the name of diplomatic dealings and communication especially after the party joined the peace process, hobnobbing with some external elements and even agency people of other countries was so visible that it badly tarnished its image in the eyes of patriotic Nepali people. In the first election, many patriotic Nepalese people had supported and voted the UCPN-Maoist for its nationalist posture. But its stance and position on certain issues and dealings with external forces especially India came under scathing criticism from a large chunk of patriotic people, who in the November election chose not to vote the UCPN-Maoist. This was one of the issues that led the Vaidya group to exit from the party. But the UCPN-Maoist was so carried away with the false notion that this party would continue to maintain its earlier strength even after the party split.

However, the election results came as a serious blow to the UCPN-Maoist, which compelled it to do a serious soul searching as to what went wrong and where the leadership failed to visualize this scenario earlier.  The party has finally arrived at a conclusion has it made series of mistakes on both ideological and practical fronts. Party chairman Prachanda more than once has made his position clear that there had been mistakes in the past and vowed to correct those mistakes to ensure that the UCPN-Maoist regains its earlier position once again. As a result, he genuinely started dialogue with several other parties for unity.

While Prachanda realized that his strength alone would not be sufficient to regain the popular support to make the UCP-Maoist the largest party, Mohan Vaidya, too, arrived at a conclusion that his party also would not be able to lead and complete the revolution he has been championing. Thus, both the groups realized the necessity of unity among at least the parties that have common programmes and policies. The creation of a united front of five parties including the UCPN-Maoist and CPN-Maoist is, thus, guided by the doctrine of necessity and out of compulsion. Similarly, other three small groups led by Matrkia Yadav, Mani Thapa and Pari Thapa, too, have come to realize that they, with their marginalized strength,  would not achieve what they had planned to do. Moreover, their position and popularity further declined after they disassociated with the mother party. Thus, they have finally agreed to forge a united front for the time being but are expected to ultimately merge into one single party. Now the unity among the parties that follow Maoism/ Mao Thought as their guiding political and ideological principle is a praiseworthy move, which, one day, would facilitate to create a single communist center in Nepal.

All communist groups in Nepal claim to be the only revolutionary and genuine party and accuse the other either reformist/revisionist or dogmatist and left extremist group. But the problem with them is not the ideology but clash for interests and competition for power. In the communist party, the rivalry for leadership and power is so harsh and ugly that they do not normally accept the existence of the other or rival, which ultimately leads to party split. This is not in conformity with Marxist dialectics.

The Communist Party of Nepal was formed by Puspa Lal along with his three other colleagues including Nirajan Govinda Vaidya, Narayan Vilas Joshi and Nara Bahadur Karmacharya in 1949 with the clear objective of liberating Nepal from the semi-feudal and semi-colonial status. National liberation movement was therefore a fundamental purpose of the communist party. The Communist Party of Nepal had thus become of target of expansionist and imperialist powers and their agents in Nepal for its nationalist and patriotic posture.

 Right from the beginning, factionalism and factional rivalry had crept into the communist party which continued to grow. In the third national congress, the factional fight formally sowed the seed of division in the party. Since then the fragmentation process has continued unabated, as a result of which we have more than a dozen communist groups in Nepal. Although the apparent reason for the split in the communist party was differences in ideological perspective, the inherent factor was the intention of capturing party leadership. This tendency continues in all communist parties even in present which is the main obstacle for party unity.

In multi-party political system, multiple political interest groups and ideologies exist and compete, which is a natural phenomenon. But rivalries and competition among the political forces that share common and identical interests, objectives and ideology is quite unbecoming. Thus, it requires all the political parties that have communist tag and communist programmes to come together. Now, we have seen a new initiative that has brought the five Maoist parties together. This may serve as a beginning of the unity among all the communist and leftist parties in Nepal.

At present there are clearly, three major trends in Nepal’s communist movement. One is parliamentary trend which is being represented by the CPN-UML. The second trend is represented by the Mohan Vaidya-led CPN-Maoist, which does not subscribe to parliamentary road but the path of protracted people’s war in the fashion Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist Party launched the revolution in China. The other trend is twin tactics of peaceful parliamentary and insurrection to capture state power. The UCPN-Maoist represents this trend.

Whatever the approach and modus operandi, their objective is to liberate Nepal from capitalist and imperialist exploitation and establish a socialist type of political superstructure in which there would be equitable society free from exploitation and discrimination with judicious distribution of resources. Marxism is the basic and fundamental ideological guideline. Thus, there is no meaning to have so many communist parties in Nepal with similar policies and programme. As the communist remain divided, rightist and reactionaries have reaped benefit. Thus, the communist parties have to either give up their communist tag and programmes or come together under a single banner so that there would be a strong communist center in Nepal. Now the bigger parties have to take initiative and the smaller ones need to respond and reciprocate positively for the interest of all working class people in Nepal. The unity and cooperation among the communist parties is even more needed in the present context when Nepal is in the process of constitution writing. If the communist parties unite and work together, Nepal will have a genuine progressive and socialism oriented constitution. For this, CPN-UML and UCPN-Maoist and CPN-Maoist need to be more flexible.  If these three parties strike a deal to cooperate one another in constitution writing and other issues, other fringe left parties, too, will join which will have a common strong voice and stance for a socialist transformation of the country. This is necessary and possible provided senior most leaders of three main parties respond positively. This should not be just for marriage of convenience but should be motivated by the intent of genuinely unifying the communist movement of Nepal.