ABC

Ram Baran Yadav: Republic Nepal’s First President

The Maoists are certainly right when they claim that although they were technically defeated in the First Presidential Voting of Nepal, it was their ideological victory. Ram Baran Yadav’s election as the first President of the Republic Nepal has yielded a positive result for the ethnically divided country, provided the political leaders do not indulge in their petty personal vendettas any further.

Earlier, when the Maoist did not accept Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal as the presidential candidates, the Nepali Congress and the UML decided to stay out of the government. And now, the Maoists have opted for staying in the opposition citing the defeat of their presidential candidate. What one wonders is, which country do these party leaders really belong to?

The Nepali Congress, the United Marxist Leninist Party, and the Madhesi Forum seem to have an upper hand in the presidential bargaining. However, the leaders of NC and UML must realize that they were forced to field the hitherto unseen Madhesi candidates by withdrawing their earlier “Irreplaceable” candidates Girija Prasad Koirala and Madhav Kumar Nepal. The Maoists had been asking to field a candidate from the marginalized community from the very beginning. How could the Maoist leadership otherwise convince their ethnically motivated cadres?

Further, the Maoists leadership has accepted their defeat as a normal democratic process. If so, they should now reconsider their decision of backing-out from forming the government simply because the President happens to be from another party. Similarly, other parties, too, must make a favorable environment for forming a stable Maoist-led government.