Mistrusted, misguided

No one will be fooled by Dahal’s new bid to resurrect his image as a champion of progressive agendas.

The luxurious new life of Pushpa Kamal Dahal is an antithesis of his younger days when he took up arms for the sake of the marginalised and downtrodden sections of society. As the leader of a bloody insurgency that claimed nearly 17,000 lives, Dahal has always had a legion of detractors. But when he first came out of the jungles to join mainstream politics, he also had a lot of public support, as was evident from the 220 seats his party won in the first Constituent Assembly election in 2008. The Maoist tally was double the number of the second-placed Nepali Congress, as the party got nearly 30 percent of all cast votes. By the time of the 2022 national elections, it had to be satisfied with 32 seats and just around 14 percent of the votes. The reason for this steady erosion in the party’s electoral support is clear enough. Primarily, it is a reflection of Dahal forgetting his roots. He is today no different to the ‘crony capitalists’ of the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML he once blamed for all the country’s woes. There is now not a ‘progressive’ bone in his body.