Prime Minister in the making

Basanta Lohani

The learned Dr. Baburam Bhattarai declared few months ago that he would rather get shot dead inside Baluwatar than leave it. But now he is in haste to leave Baluwatar, the prime minister’s official residence. As the report goes, he has already ferried some of his belongings. True, Baluwatar is nobody’s permanent abode. But the enigma that drives Baburamji has made a metamorphic personality in him, inside or outside of Baluwatar. Thus, his ‘political motor reflex’ is perfectly in tune with the pied piper.

His loyalty is undivided. Thus, he became the prime minister. He could roar in midnight like the lion, be mellowed the next morning and again bounce back like a cat after being refilled. One thing is clear now. He needs a constant refilling to show his attitudes of militancy, adamancy, amenability and reconciliation. In this process, he has made the outside power to harvest the benefit of the people’s war. In nutshell, this is what his wartime comrade-in-arms Mohan Vaidya said the other day. Likewise, the other thing is his competence in theatrics. The champions in the Theatre of Absurd may find it difficult to keep pace with him. This way he has elevated himself to the position of a ‘fat cat’, having a blurred vision of a capitalistic revolution.

What is capitalistic revolution is like an abstract painting. Do they have any conceptual framework in terms of explaining how capitalist revolution starts and gets momentum while undergoing different process of change? All they can do is to forcibly and redundantly link it to Marxism and make rigmarole. Thus, it cannot drive the Maoists cadres, forget about people, to romanticism the way people’s war once did with outside logistics. At best, it could be a ‘hazy ideological sun shine’ to the red capitalist class of the Maoist party. This blurred slogan has relieved the leadership of a false and misleading appearance. No longer do they need to carry the burden of identifying India as their prime enemy. As Baburamji says, they have to rise above nationalism. What does it mean? What is its mode of transmission? Another gab of absurdity.

The investment on Baburamji is awesome. Thus, he cannot just resign and go even if he wants to do so. A spare wheel the way he is to remain deserved a respectable exit. To this end, the pied piper had to make a musical composition, fix arrangers and tune it. In this process, we the people have lost so much of our precious time and indigenous strength. And those in the government have looted ruthlessly in the name of republican politics rising to the level of ‘fat cat’, no, ‘aggressive fat cats’.

The search for prime minister is on. The idea of making the chief justice as the prime minister to hold the election within three and half months, that is, within May has brought heated discussions and divisions. A section of lawyers and intellectuals is alarmed and has dubbed it as the last attempt to destroy the only remaining institution, the judiciary. I think it holds a lot of water to flood this country into ‘fluid instability’. And, this idea of chief justice, as the former justice Anup Raj Sharma said in a television show, came from outside. Yes, the pied piper.

One thing is clear like the day light sun that the election is not what the Maoists want from inside for around a year. They want themselves to be selected from outside for around a year. This is what I have written many times while they were misleading the people as being so eager to seek the people’s mandate. Anup Rajji categorically said that the election is not possible within May and thus will drag on to November. Rightly, the opposition has not bought this idea of chief justice holding the government. They have rejected it outright. But the pied piper is hell bent to provide a fig leaf to Baburamji. This is the name of the game – create division and rule by proxy.

Now a revolution from within is a must to safeguard our national sensibility.

(The author can be reached at: bklohani@hotmail.com)

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