The main communist party CPN (Maoist) has won in a general election so handsomely that they have emerged as the single largest party. Since the election is or a Constituent Assembly of the country to frame a new Constitution , the CPN (Maoist), whose democratic credentials are being questioned there every day, said that they wanted a government of national consensus to govern in the interim period, while the country’s constitution is drafted.

The question is that, do the previous Government needed to resign? That Government is led by Nepal’s old war-horse, GP Koirala of the Nepalese Congress (NC) and he refuses to resign. Why? Because he says that the interim constitution by which he was positioned as he prime minister in 2006 did not have an explicit provision calling or the government to resign to pave way for the victors in the popular polls. If that piece of logic seems impossible, his apologists have some more. Koirala is not resigning because he wants to own up for the past mistakes. That is the reason why he wants to become a president of the new republic.

So the Maoists now have pushed Koirala’s hands. There is more to it and the Congress leadership knows it. But did they contest the 2004 election on the issue of forging a strategic relationship with the USA? They did not. Shouldn’t they have held a referendum in the country before concluding such a deal and got a popular verdict beforehand? What do the democrats say, social or otherwise? Or does the Congress leadership in India like GP Koirala want to own up past mistakes, thus be in power? It seemed like a party straining at the leash of Parliamentary politics, trying to deal with sobriety a situation that bourgeois democratic politics in that country has handed out.

Here is a group of communist and left parties who support the Congress-led UPA government from outside of Government, differing with the latter vehemently about what kind of a country India should be. The Indian left parties also fear that if India gets locked into that kind of a relationship with the USA it would for a long time be in an antagonistic relationship with a giant next door neighbor, China, all for the sake of a partner 14,000 kms away. And finally, the left parties are not sure what the Indian power elite would do next for their constituents in Washington if the deal went through.

The question about the nuclear deal today is really moot. For had it been just about nuclear power, would a Congress prime minister stake his all on that deal. A story is being touted around the country that the Indian nuclear power programme is facing severe shortage of uranium, hence we need the deal. But doesn’t the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) have a safety clause emergency provision by which even a non-NPT country can seek Uranium from one of the member countries. Just in 2006 Russia gave India Uranium under that provision for Tarapur.