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| Prachanda's loss throws open India-China rivalry |
| Jyoti Malhotra / New Delhi Sep 08, 2010, 00:31 IST |
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Kathmandu has become the latest proxy battleground between regional powers India and China to demonstrate their sphere of influence, with leaked tapes and trade disagreements playing out against a snowballing political crisis, in which Nepal’s lawmakers today rejected a record seventh attempt by Maoist candidate Pushpa Kamal Dahal, or Prachanda, to become prime minister.
Prachanda managed to secure only 252 votes out of 601, while his Nepali Congress (NC) rival Ram Chandra Poudel, did even worse with 119, but the fact remained that a breakaway Madhesi party with 25 seats could not decisively influence the shape of the election in favour of the Maoists.
Nepali and Indian observers who sought anonymity said India had “succeeded” in denying Prachanda “victory,” but conceded that the leak of an audio tape on Friday in which Maoist ideologue Krishna Bahadur Mahara is said to be asking for Rs 50 crore from an allegedly Chinese person to “’buy” MPs, had affected the image of the Maoists.
A little known student’s group called the “Free Youth Organisation”, claiming to have 20,000 members in Hong Kong and Malaysia, demonstrated outside the Chinese embassy today, even as the vote for Nepal’s future prime minister was taking place, protesting “foreign interference” and demanding that Mahara leave Nepal.
Mahara has rejected the leaked tape as being “fabricated,” while the Chinese have refused to react. But Nepal’s political parties, led by the Nepali Congress, have urged the moderate Leftist caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal of the CPN-UML party to begin an inquiry. PTI quoted Indian sources as saying they had “taken note” of the reports.
Meanwhile, over the last few weeks, an unseemly spat between Dabur Nepal and a major Nepali media house, Kantipur Publications, over alleged blackmail threats in favour of writing positive stories in return for advertisement, has hogged local headlines.
As Dabur Nepal complained to the Indian embassy in Kathmandu about the alleged blackmail and claimed protection, the Indian embassy not only took the matter to the Press Council but also to Nepal’s foreign ministry.
Amongst the spate of accusations and counter-accusations which flew thick and fast in Kathmandu, the Indian embassy was believed to have egged Dabur Nepal to take action against Kantipur because it was intent upon carrying Maoist-inspired “anti-Indian” articles.
With Indian government sources admitting on the condition of anonymity that New Delhi would prefer “centrist” parties like the Nepali Congress, “not leftist parties like the Maoists” to take charge in Kathmandu, the unspoken concern seemed clear: New Delhi was increasingly worried about China’s creeping influence in the still-new Himalayan republic.
As Kanti Bajpai told the Nepali newspaper, Republica, “India lives in fear of its neighbors reaching out to outsiders to balance against Indian power. New Delhi would love to integrate the region under its leadership and keep the great powers out.”
Delhi’s concerns relate as much to the security and stability of the open border between India and Nepal as to the fact that certain Maoist ideologues are openly pro-China. Indian officials also point out that the open border has become a “hotbed of ISI intrigue.”
A former Indian diplomat with intimate knowledge of Nepal admitted that India “needed to be much, much more engaged with Nepal…Delhi’s episodic interest in Kathmandu is a recipe for the next crisis,” he said.
Meanwhile, as the Dabur Nepal-Kantipur crisis snowballed and the leaked audio tape allegedly between Mahara and the “Chinese” person added to the rising temperature in Kathmandu, Upendra Yadav of the Madhesi Janadhikar Front announced that he, along with 25 MPs, was breaking away from the United Madhesi Front (with 82 seats) and would vote in favour of the Maoists.
Indian sources had already confirmed that one of the messages that Shyam Saran, a former foreign secretary and former ambassador to Nepal, had carried to Kathmandu during his visit last month was to tell the Madhesis to “stay united”.
The Indian government sources admitted that if the Madhesis stayed together, chances of Prachanda winning the PM elections were remote.
India’s ambassador to Nepal, Rakesh Sood, was also believed to be meeting CPN-UML leaders in recent days in an effort to persuade them to abandon their neutrality in the election and support NC candidate Poudel.
In the event, Poudel has done worse than Prachanda in today’s election, but as one observer pointed out, “the truth is that nobody has won.”
Meanwhile, the disagreement between Dabur Nepal and Kantipur continues, even though a Kantipur editor, Akhilesh Upadhyaya, told Business Standard that he would readily welcome Dabur Nepal’s advertising back, as the media house well understood the “value of commerce” in a newspaper’s business.
A Dabur spokesperson in Delhi, who refused to identify himself, only said his company expected the government to stop this “negative propaganda,” in which Dabur products were being described as inferior.
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