The Rastriya Janashakti Party (RJP), a breakaway from the pro-palace Rastriya Prajatantra party, on Sunday passed a political resolution that says the circle of constitutional monarchists is shrinking, thanks to the government’s “one-point strategy of hounding the parties or forces supportive of constitutional monarchy, sidelining them and eventually destroying their existence”. The RJP’s central working committee decided to reject the policy of ‘status quo’ and adopt one of the political ‘middle of the road’. It has branded as a ‘lurch towards extremism’ the Nepali Congress’s deletion of its 59-year commitment to constitutional monarchy from its statute and the CPN-UML’s new policy of campaigning for a constituent assembly and a republic. Pointing out the polarisation of the country along the lines of ‘right and left extremism’, the RJP sees the Maoists’ unilateral ceasefire, along with the above-mentioned decisions of the CPN-UML and the NC, as a sure way to a highly critical, complicated and delicate phase.

The RJP’s resolution matters as it comes from a party whose leaders, such as its chairman Surya Bahadur Thapa, who became the prime minister under both Panchayat and under Article 127, and Dr. Prakash Chandra Lohani, who held ministerial portfolios under both the periods, have supported the monarchy, active or constitutional, during their long political careers. The RJP has stressed the “imperative need to build the atmosphere for talks and resolve the Maoist problem by accepting the supremacy of the popular will, democracy and human rights.” But it has failed to spell out its stance clearly beyond such statements of goodwill. Where does it stand on the Maoists’ core demand for constiuent assembly, for example? The failure of the Thapa-led government under Article 127 to consider this very demand was the principal stated reason why the Maoists had pulled out of the last peace talks.

The RJP reckons that the new relationship developing between the Maoists and the political parties has helped both ‘expand their agendas’, with the possibility of the Maoists entering urban areas and the political parties going to the villages with the slogan — ‘democratic republic’. New national equations may well be emerging that does not seem to be going in the government’s favour. In this context, the crisis cannot be overcome by attempts to form a pro-government party or grouping of self-styled nationalists at the cost of the concept of people’s sovereignty. For one, the RJP emphasises collaboration between the King and the political forces. This is well and good, yet the problem persists precisely because this has not been forthcoming. What is the RJP’s stand in the absence of such a collaboration?