Kathmandu, August 24:

People’s support is necessary to get legitimacy of any revolution and it is manifested through an election, CPN-UML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said today.

He also said there was no immediate possibility of unification between the UML and the CPN (Maoist), as both the parties were yet to be clear about their ideological ground.

Addressing a programme organised here to release a book entitled Ajako Marxbad and Nepali Kranti (Contemporary Marxism and Nepali Revolution), authored by UML youth leader Ghanashyam Bhusal, Nepal said that only way to get legitimacy of any political change is to gain people’s mandate through the election.

He said that it was not necessary, as has been ascertained by classical Marxists, to resort to violence or armed struggle to bring about changes in the society. Communists in many Latin American countries have been able to bring about social and political changes through ballot boxes, he said.

In order to bring about sociopolitical changes in Nepal, he said, the monarchy should be abolished and the country should be declared a republic through people’s mandate. “The Nepali Congress and Nepali Congress-Democratic should also understand the fact that the concept of baby king and minor king will have no relevance in the constituent assembly election. All the parties must be united to establish a republic in the country,” he further said.

Commenting on the book, Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai said that there was no other way than to forge a unity between the UML and the Maoists though the Maoists must have committed some mistakes during the People’s War. “The imperialists will judge us from the same angle even if we do not unite,” he said.

Bhattarai said that the author of the book has raised “good questions” about the problems in Nepali revolution, but has not been able to answer them in a “dialectical” and “revolutionary manner”. He also said no revolution can succeed in a peaceful manner due to interference of the imperialists.

Intellectual Pradip Giri, of the Nepali Congress-Democratic, commenting on Bhusal’s book, said the Nepali capitalism could be descried as bhatuwa punjibad (comprador capitalism) in the sense that it relies more on commission and trade, not on creative works. Bhusal, the author, said the essence of his book was that humanity was reduced to a “voting paper” in the name of democracy, while the others who raised arms for freeing society from exploitation were glued to the guns.