Prachanda in Pharping

Pharping (Kathmandu), April 7: Within minutes of hitting the road, Prachanda has become the colour of his calling — blazed in red from head to toe by the faithful who’ve been waiting lined up with fistfuls of vermilion.

He jumps out of the silver Pajero, shiny hair slicked back, tweed jacket neatly buttoned, and gets instantly swallowed by a swill of people that has scattered his ring of Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers.

A melee ensues, his guards straining to keep control, the crowd swarming over. Prachanda vanishes.

By the time he emerges, the dapper guerrilla has turned into a portly god, doused in sindoor, drowned in garlands as thick as the tyres of his four-wheel drive, a beatific smile on his face.

This is the first of many roadside gatherings he’ll address, megaphone in hand, as the campaign for the April 10 elections winds down.

Pharping, a scattered hillock settlement overlooking the teeming vale of Kathmandu, was until recently a staging post for Prachanda’s rebel army — they drilled their assaults in these hills. Today, it’s his chosen constituency. The soldiers have become his poll managers, their general has become a candidate.

A tough fight, most reckon, against Sanu Shreshta, a veteran of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML), but not if you ask Prachanda’s cadres, many of them still out in battle fatigues. “He’s our boss,” they bluntly tell you. “He has to win, just look at how the people are greeting him.”

Prachanda is clearly revelling in the adulation; and having missed out on it through his underground days, he’s happy to be indulged at length, the protestations of his stern securitymen notwithstanding.

“We have to make a new Nepal, end thousands of years of exploitation and inequality, give dignity to the poor, that is what we always fought for, that is what this fight is about too,” he tells the crowd, keeping his appeal short. “Everywhere I go, I see poverty and underdevelopment, we are the only ones who can change that.”

There are still hands reaching out — this is yesterday’s shadowy myth in flesh and bone, quickly get a feel — as he climbs back in, surrounded by grey-suited guards. You can see he wants to reach back, even stay a bit longer. But they’re closing the door on him, he’s running late.

He waves back, then the caravan rumbles on, tailed by a dozen bikers, the Maoist insignia emblazoned on their chests, their red flags aflutter, their high-pitched “Lal salaam, lal salaam!” echoing.

“It’s fantastic, just fantastic,” he tells us over lunch in a crossroads shack a little later. “This is a new life for me, to be out in the open like this among the people, not having to bother about hiding or escaping….”

There are still those who suspect Prachanda could leap back into the jungle and resume his war if elections don’t deliver the Maoists a substantive hold over Nepali politics. He’s been saying oft that if there is a “conspiracy” to defeat his party, he’ll be forced to reject the elections, that he’ll not take a “fraudulent” poll “lying down”.

Would that mean resumption of civil war, you wonder, and Prachanda is trigger-ready with his retort. “Please understand distinctions,” he pleads. “We are committed to the peace process, we are going to accept the verdict of these elections, whatever it is, we are only saying we will not accept an election that is not free and fair.

“There are forces that are trying to rob the Nepali people of their franchise with conspiracies, vested interests like America and India, vested interests like the so-called king and his courtiers. We will reject their designs, but we will accept the verdict, that is what I am saying.”

There’s a visible hole in that assurance that the Maoists could use to slip through should the verdict not meet their ambitions. For all of Prachanda’s outward optimism, there are enough signs the Maoists are worried about how they’ll do — Prachanda has been screaming “conspiracy” too often, and in too many places Maoist cadres are resorting to intimidation, even violence, on political rivals.

Such attacks are staple and are being widely seen as a sign of Maoist desperation. “They know they aren’t going to achieve the sweep they are claiming,” says a civil society activist. “They are trying to browbeat the opposition and they are also preparing the ground for an average showing by raising the conspiracy alarm.”

Prachanda hasn’t become a force to reckon with for nothing. He has a formidable base and a readymade constituency of the poor. But he has formidable and readymade adversaries, too. The conservative Nepali Congress, the more organised UML, not to forget the status quoists in the palace and the army. Besides, there are also the ranks of those the Maoists disaffected during the decade-long civil war. “The Maoists have a solid cadre and strong appeal particularly among poor,” said the activist. “But they know that will not be enough, they have reason to be nervous.”

To Prachanda, though, that’s civil society nonsense, not much more. “We are confident we will win a good majority in a free election, there is nothing to doubt that,” he says with pursed-lip finality.

Something tells you the operative part of that statement is not “good majority” but “free election”. An escape route is in place. But then, as a guerrilla warrior, that must come naturally to Prachanda.