|
FACING the dark prospect of his
position being abolished by parliament, Nepal’s sidelined king
last Monday used a public holiday celebrating democracy to defend
his decision to proclaim absolute rule, governing for 14 months
until people power made him give up.
He made a
tepid apology for any mistakes.
Elections
not held
King Gyanendra
said in his statement issued by the royal palace secretariat that he
dismissed the government in February 2005 because of its inability
to hold elections while under threat from Maoist rebels.
“It is clear
that the prevailing situation compelled us to take the ... step,”
he said in a National Democracy Day statement, adding the government
“was unable to conduct general elections within the timeframe
stipulated by the Constitution.”
The king,
however, said he was “morally responsible for any success or
failure” of his rule, which ended in April 2006. More than a dozen
protesters died during demonstrations against absolute rule and
security forces arrested hundreds of others.
Pledge to
the people
The king
pledged to abide by “the aspirations of the Nepalese people, on
whom sovereignty is vested.”
Democracy Day
marks the overthrow of the 104-year-old Rana reign in 1950 by the
Shah Dynasty led by Gyanendra’s grandfather, Tribhuvan, who
promised democracy but whose successor, King Mahendra, in 1960
reinstated executive royal power.
The Shah
family ruled by royal decree until protests in 1990 ushered in a
constitutional monarchy.
The comments
by Gyanendra came as the former rebels, who joined the parliament in
January as part of a peace deal with political parties, have stepped
up calls for the monarchy to be abolished and protested his
statement Monday.
They accuse
the king of stirring ethnic unrest in the southeast to derail the
peace process and planned polls in June 2007 to rewrite the
Constitution and determine the fate of the monarchy.
Maoist
comment
“The king is
in a suspended position and he has no authority to make such a
statement,” Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara told AFP.
“Now there
is no other option than to declare Nepal a democratic republic
before going for the constituent assembly elections,” he said.
The Maoists
reached a peace deal with political parties in November 2006 which
ended a decade of war that had claimed at least 13,000 lives.
A royal
massacre by Crown Prince Dipendra—who gunned down his parents,
King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya, and other relatives, before
killing himself in a drunken rage over disapproval of his love
life—brought Gyanendra to power in 2001.
Gyanendra was
one of the few royals away from the palace that evening, and his
unpopular son, Crown Prince Paras, was another royal survivor, which
fueled conspiracy theories.
 --AFP
|
