Three days ahead of the four-day general strike called by the seven-party alliance, the Maoists, who have reached a 12-point understanding with the alliance with the constituent assembly as its cornerstone, announced an indefinite ceasefire in the Kathmandu Valley from Monday evening. This is a step calculated to help the alliance’s peaceful programme of bandh and non-cooperation as part of the rebels’ commitment. At the same time, the Maoist announcement seeks to neutralise the government’s bellicose statements that it will take any measures to foil the parties’ programme on the grounds that there is the likelihood of Maoist infiltration into the political parties’ demonstrations. However, Shrish Shumsher Rana, the government’s spokesperson and minister of state for Information and Communication, has described it as a ‘Maoist strategy’, saying that the government does not believe in what the ‘terrorists’ have to say.

Under the Constitution, to assemble peaceably and to voice dissent are fundamental rights. But now, these rights are available only at the mercy of those in power. The government has been threatening to treat the political parties at par with the Maoists and has therefore started claiming that any protest programme of the parties is essentially the programme of the Maoists. Hell-bent on foiling the parties’ attempt at a show of strength, the government is likely to make sure that their protests do not succeed. If opposition rallies are to be banned on the basis of suspicions, then the constitutionally guaranteed rights will stand nullified by those in power in pursuit of their vested interests.

This aggressive mood is fully recaptured by the changes effected for the fifth time in the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Control and Punishment Ordinance (TADO) — a questionable practice that does away with the need for its endorsement by Parliament before the ordinance’s six-month expiry period. The new changes include a provision for treating anyone as ‘terrorist’ who establishes contact with the Maoists, and even more ominous is the provision that it can slap anybody with a ‘terrorist’ tag for any contact made with the rebels in the past. Clearly, these provisions are aimed at cowing the political parties and the news media into submission. It is far from clear whether the government would be able to get rid of the Maoist insurgency and the political opposition with harsher laws and arbitrary behaviour, but it is not difficult to see that the government is not really inclined to hand over power to the mainstream political parties.