Nepal's unending troubles

By Charles Haviland BBC News, Kathmandu

The king seized power on 1 February, 2005

King Gyanendra of Nepal has gone on television to defend his record after one year leading the government.

He said 12 months of royal rule had given Nepalis "confidence".

But many will question his assertion that the country is on the right track.

The past year has seen a rise in insurgency-related violence, stepped-up curtailment of civil liberties, and an increase in the monarchy's isolation, both domestically and internationally.

Two of the biggest issues that Nepal is currently struggling with are peace and democracy.

Both were put centre-stage by the monarch on this anniversary and in his takeover speech one year ago.

Then, he said he would need three years to put democracy back on track and deliver peace to a country whose Maoist insurgency is now a decade old.

The country is now immersed in a battle over the meaning of democracy.

Electoral chaos

The king has just confirmed that the authorities will press ahead with plans for municipal elections on 8 February despite security worries, an opposition boycott and Maoist rebel attacks on candidates.

The rebels abandoned their truce last month

Government ministers ask, rhetorically, how the sidelined opposition parties can be against an electoral process.

But those parties view the process as one designed to entrench royal rule.

The elections have descended into chaos, with credible accounts of local authorities forcing candidates into secure houses to stop them withdrawing from the polls, or making them sign premature oaths of office in unopposed seats.

Palace rule has also seen considerable erosion of the rule of law and civil liberties.

The authorities have frequently rearrested detainees within minutes of the Supreme Court ordering their release.

They have also set up their own corruption control commission - it has imprisoned former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba but has been widely criticised for combining the roles of prosecutor and judge.

Many media outlets are able to criticise the authorities heavily but there have been numerous attempts to stifle them, most recently with a huge rise in the cost of licences for radio stations.

Street demonstrations have been restricted. The unpredictable cutting of mobile or land phone lines, seemingly at the palace's whim, is increasing anger among those whose livelihood has, in many cases, been significantly boosted by phones, many of them not wealthy at all.

Continuing conflict

Peace in the decade-long conflict remains elusive.

The army says, with some justification, that it is now preventing very large-scale rebel assaults on district headquarters.

The protestors are demanding that the king restore democracy

But security forces, especially police, continue to die by the dozen in Maoist attacks, which the rebels are threatening to take to the towns.

The government refused to join a four-month Maoist ceasefire, saying the rebels would use it to rearm.

Such remarks may have been justified.

On the ground, though, rebel violence during the truce was on the decline, while the army was widely accused of killing unarmed Maoists.

People in the most conflict-hit areas enjoyed a major respite and felt it could have lasted longer had the government reciprocated.

Linked with the conflict, human rights violations by both sides have continued at a high level.

Both sides have summarily killed civilians.

One bright spot, however, has been the opening of a Nepal office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which is seeking to make each side accountable for violations.

However, signs of action against transgressors - as promised by leaders on both warring sides - are taking time to emerge.

As for anti-corruption and good governance, also promised by the king last year, progress is questionable.

Some of the king's appointed ministers have had tainted or criminal track records.

Several of them have been subsequently sacked and replaced by figures carrying more weight, such as Narayan Singh Pun, a key broker in peace talks in 2003.

'Political isolation'

On the other hand, despite talk of decentralisation, the king has been appointing his own loyalists to regional and zonal administrative posts around the country.

As Nepalis search for a way forward, the palace is finding itself increasingly isolated in the political arena.

There rebels have threatened to attack cities

The Maoists have by no means laid down their arms, but a decision by them last year to subscribe to multi-party democracy in the future tempted the sidelined parties to sign an accord with them during the ceasefire.

Very many issues remain glossed over, but this is an agreement which excluded the king.

Moreover, the biggest parties have dropped their previous allegiance to the system of monarchy, one of them explicitly adopting a republican agenda.

Most analysts in Nepal agree that talks, not military might, will bring peace, and then maybe social change in a desperately poor country.

The forthcoming municipal polls have, however, set the palace at odds with both their non-violent and their violent opponents.

Indeed, for the past year the royal palace has effectively opened up a battle on two fronts.