It looks like I have become Socialist’s Resistance top expert on Nepal. It was not a hotly contested struggle. This is for the next issue of the paper. I’d be really grateful if anyone could suggest a less rubbish title.

Earlier this year Nepal was on the threshold of revolution. Ten years of armed struggle, weeks of strikes and street protests involving tens of thousands of people in conflict with the police and army had brought King Gyanendra’s regime to its knees. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) controlled two thirds of countryside and was leading huge daily protests.

Gyanendra yielded to the mass pressure for democracy and has restored the Nepalese parliament under the leadership of Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala. Koirala is the leader of Nepali Congress, a party that belongs to Tony Blair’s Socialist International. The eighty four year old politician is a longstanding figure in the country’s politics and is accused by opponents of being utterly corrupt.

Faced with a choice of taking power themselves as representatives of Nepal’s peasants and workers the Maoists opted to send their leader Prachanda to meet the prime minister to discuss a settlement. They have disagreed publicly on the continued need for a monarchy but have found an accommodation on most other important points.

There will be elections to a constituent assembly which will write a new constitution. In the meantime an interim government of seven parties, in which the Maoists are poorly represented will replace the current parliament and the “people’s government” in areas controlled by the CPN. Neither the guerrillas nor the state forces will disarm but they will be overseen by the United Nations.

The CPN has thrown away an historic opportunity for Nepal’s workers and peasants. They have allowed themselves to become part of a slapdash coalition of the parties of Nepal’s ruling class. Instead of relying on the support that they were able to mobilise in the cities they are now making secret deals with an incompetent bourgeois crook. It is reported that members of key decision making committees found out that they had got their jobs through the newspapers. This sort of deal making means they are not accountable to the workers, peasants and urban poor whose pressure forced the monarch to make concessions to democracy.

Maoist organisations have always swung between murderous political gangsterism towards other socialists and a willingness to make deals with the “patriotic bourgeoisie”. The CPN is no different in this respect. It seems certain that they will fight the forthcoming elections as loyal defenders of the new ruling class constitution. In doing so they will have betrayed the Nepalese peasants and workers who brought the country to the edge of revolution.