Nepal's Maoists, who until two years ago were a vicious rebel party to a decade-long civil war, look likely to have won a general election. Of 186 seats declared on Monday April 14th the Maoists had won 103. A complicated electoral system mixing direct elections with proportional representation makes the overall complexion of the impending 601-seat assembly still hard to predict. But the Maoists may have won an outright majority.....
....An outright victory for the Maoists would be a nightmare for India. Plagued by a
Maoist insurgency of its own, India until recently backed Nepal’s blundering King Gyanendra, who tried to crush the Maoists in the field. India forsook the king after he seized power in 2005. And it played an important part in brokering the peace process after his withdrawal from power following street protests the next year....
Bookmarks