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News Analysis

Nepal endorses peace amid tough challenges

AFP, Kathmandu
Crucial polls in Nepal that had been plagued by pre-election violence have passed off smoothly, but analysts warn it is too early to declare peace has truly broken out in the Himalayan nation
The election Thursday saw a strong turnout, a sign that voters wanted to give their resounding backing to efforts to turn the page on a decade-long Maoist revolt.
It was also a major achievement for the Maoists: in the run-up to the polls they were under fire for bullying voters, but polling day passed off surprisingly peacefully with only sporadic violence reported.
"I congratulate the people of Nepal, who have demonstrated their commitment to democracy by turning out in large numbers to vote," said Ian Martin, the head of the United Nations peace mission in Nepal.
"Election day was conducted by and large in a peaceful and orderly manner," he said. In all three people died in isolated incidents on polling day, far lower than feared.
When the full results emerge over the coming weeks, Nepal will have a new 601-seat assembly that will tear up the country's past status as a Hindu monarchy and rewrite a new constitution from scratch.
But analysts say this process --from the counting of ballots to the eventual expected sacking of unpopular King Gyanendra — will be no easy ride for a country that has a history of political instability.
"Holding the constituent assembly election was a big chal-
lenge, but the ones ahead are bigger,” cautioned Sudhcer Shanna, editor of the weekly news magazine Nepal.
The key, he said, was for Nepal's two biggest mainstream parties and the Maoists -- the once bitter foes who signed a peace pact in 2006 -- to see through their often awkward marriage of convenience
"All the parties have their own road maps. If the harmony between the big three parties breaks, it will be a huge hurdle," Sharma said, referring to the Nepal i Congress, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).
Strains could start to show shortly after the votes have been counted, said Rhoderick Chalmers, Nepal's country director for the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.
"The very first challenge will be to get to the end of the counting process and have the major parties accept the results," said Chalmers, echoing UN concerns.
This could be toughest for the Maoists, who have to reconcile rival factions within the party --those ready for realpolitik and those still married to the revolutionary dogma that fuelled their "people's war."
If that dichotomy is resolved, the new Constituent Assembly will then have to grapple with what to do with the king.
"It is not really specified what is meant by 'implementing' a republic. Some individuals or small parties might try to shift the goalposts and reopen the question of
whether the monarchy should be abolished,” Chalmers said.
The king, who ascended to the throne in 2001 after much-loved former King Birendra and most of his family were massacred by a drunk and drugged crown prince, has become widely unpopular.
But he can still count on support from sections of the army and Hindu fundamentalists who see him as an incarnation of a Hindu god.
Even if he does get the boot, some prominent politicians say keeping some kind of symbolic monarch would be a useful way of preserving the neutrality of Nepal -- a country sandwiched between competing Asian giants India and China.
The Maoists, on the other hand, are rabidly anti-royal and see their leader Prachanda - whose nom de guerre means "the fierce one" — as presidential material.
Political analyst and author Khagendra Sangraula agreed that getting the new assembly to work together would be a difficult task.
"They come from such diverse backgrounds, it will be extremely hard for the 601-members to agree," he told AFP.
However, managing to make it through Thursday’s polls in the first place is a solid step forward for Nepal -- a country still reeling from a war that left more than 13,000 dead, and still ranked as one of the poorest places on Earth.
"All these problems are not going to be solved in a day," Sangraula said. "But the process to solving them has been started with the constituent assembly election."