Prime Minister (PM) Pushpa Kamal Dahal on March 20 decided to provide Rs 200,000 each to the then disqualified Maoist combatants when his party CPN (Maoist Center) was almost alone in the Cabinet and he was overseeing 16 ministries.
We wrote an editorial two days later explaining why the decision was wrong. We were clear then and even today that those who Dahal is trying to pay with the hard-earned money of taxpayers were not combatants.
The Maoists and other ruling parties have not been able to prove that those who are going to be paid are former combatants. They have not been able to show that the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) or any other past agreement had said that they should be paid. Nobody from the ruling parties has been able to come forward to defend this decision to dole out money.
We still challenge Maoist Center and the government--If they are men who had fought during the armed conflict and the peace accord or any other past agreement had said that they should be paid, show evidence. Or else stop this plunder of the taxpayers' money, and high-handednes.
Accountability for doling out taxpayers’ money to the Maoist cadres now will not only be sought from Maoist Center but even Nepali Congress (NC) that is the largest party in the ruling coalition and heads the Finance Ministry.
There are reports that the government has prepared a working procedure for providing Rs 200,000 each to the then disqualified Maoist combatants and the Finance Ministry has allocated budget for the purpose.
NC Chief Whip Ramesh Lekhak after the meeting of ruling coalition on March 22 had publicly stated that PM Dahal claimed in the meeting that decision to pay former Maoist combatants had not been taken.
Why is the government now trying to legally dole out money by preparing a working procedure if PM Dahal had said so? NC and other coalition partners must seek answer for that from PM Dahal. If Dahal had not said so, a responsible NC leader can be deemed to have publicly lied to mislead the people.
Whether PM Dahal had said so or not can be determined later. But those who were not even combatants should not be paid with taxpayers’ money on any pretext. This should be stopped. If the government does not stop it, somebody should move the court to stop it.
Let’s look at the Maoist claims that they are former combatants.
They claim that these 4,000 persons are combatants who had participated in the Maoist armed conflict. They should also have received financial relief as per the spirit of the peace deal. But they were not provided relief by labeling them ‘disqualified’ on different pretexts and suffered injustice. They were neither allowed to be integrated with the Nepal Army nor were paid by the state. It is, therefore, necessary to pay them even 15 years after signing of the peace deal as per the spirit of the deal.
It is necessary to understand the peace process and the process of integrating Maoist combatants to know why these 4,000 persons who the Maoists want to pay with the taxpayers’ money are not former combatants and there was no agreement to pay them in this manner.
The seven political parties and the Maoists on November 8, 2006, had agreed to keep Maoist combatants in the main cantonments at Kailali, Surkhet, Rolpa, Palpa, Kavre, Sindhuli and Ilam districts, and that the combatants would be verified and monitored by the UN to hold peaceful and fair Constituent Assembly Election without any fear, and democratization and restructuring of the Nepal Army as per the spirit of the 12-point agreement, 8-point agreement, 25-point code of conduct, and the five-point letter sent to the UN on August 9, 2006.
The peace agreement signed on November 21, 2006 after that had agreed to keep the Maoist combatants and their weapons in the cantonments.
The agreement for monitoring of management of the weapons and combatants on December 6, 2006 then set standards for Maoist combatants. A person must have joined the Maoists before May 25, 2006, and be born before May 25, 1988 to qualify as a combatant during the verification process.
The cut-off date of birth was kept to be prior to May 25, 1988 to ensure that they would have completed at least 18 years on the cut-off date for joining the Maoist army. An agreement, in other words, was reached that a minor younger than 18 years would not be recognized as a combatant. Using child soldiers in war is a crime even under international laws which deem those leading such wars to have committed a crime.
The Maoists sent a total of 32,350 persons to seven main cantonments and 21 sub-cantonments spread across the country saying they were combatants after the agreement for monitoring of management of the weapons and combatants on December 6, 2006.
The United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) then started the verification process to determine who out of them were combatants, and who were not. Most of them were not combatants and had left the cantonments even before verification.
A total of 8,640 of those in the cantonments did not even turn up for the second stage of interview for verification of combatants.
UNMIN finally verified 19,602 of them to be combatants. Only 17,076 of them were present in the first stage of reclassification.
A total of 15,630 Maoist combatants then opted for voluntary retirement and returned home with Rs 500,000-800,000 while 1,422 were integrated in the Nepal Army. The 4,008 persons who UNMIN verified were not combatants left the cantonments without any payment. Because no agreement said that they would be paid after being found that they were not combatants.
How had they reached the cantonments then?
The number of combatants who had fought in the Maoist armed conflict was actually very low. A video of Maoist supremo Dahal talking about the numbers during a speech in the Shaktikhor cantonment had become public back then. Dahal had conceded in Shaktikhor that the Maoists actually had only around 7,000 combatants and taken pride in having been able to keep 30,000-35,000 persons in the cantonments fooling the state.
The 4,008 expelled by UNMIN included their thousands of cadres and their children who were sent to the cantonments by the Maoists saying they would get relief package from the state.
Many of those 4,008 expelled by UNMIN saying they were not combatants had not completed 18 years until May 25, 2006. A total of 1,973 were below 18 years while 1,035 others could not prove that they had joined the Maoist army before the cut-off date of May 25, 2006 for joining the Maoist army even though they had completed 18.
UNMIN did not even investigate whether the 1,973 minors had joined the Maoist army or not. It first investigated age, and said that those who were underage were not eligible to become combatants without checking when they had been recruited.
It was difficult to go there even for UNMIN because verifying that child soldiers were recruited by the Maoists would have meant that the Maoist leadership had committed the crime of using child soldiers. That would have attracted international laws. UNMIN, therefore, did not venture there, and the Maoist leadership was freed from the accusation of using child soldiers for then.
If the Maoist leadership now insists that they were indeed combatants and participated in the armed conflict and hence should be compensated, that would establish that the Maoists had used child soldiers in the conflict. Is the Maoist leadership ready to face the consequences of accepting to have used child soldiers in the conflict?
UNMIN had not strictly investigated even the adult combatants then. Those who could answer a few simple questions were verified to be combatants. Over 19,000 were, therefore, verified to be combatants even though Dahal had conceded in the Shaktikhor video that the Maoists actually had only around 7,000 combatants. The state spent around Rs 20 billion in their management and integration. There was embezzlement of billions in the name of running the Maoist cantonments. The advance of Rs 460 million taken by Maoist leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara for the combatants at cantonments was never reimbursed.
Everyone turned a blind eye to that to establish peace in the country and bring the Maoists into the mainstream. How necessary that was would perhaps be evaluated by history.
But the way the Maoists have continued their efforts to dole out taxpayers’ money to their cadres even after joining mainstream politics and 16 years after the peace deal is condemnable.
This is not the first time that attempts have ben made to give those 4,000 persons Rs 200,000 each. The Maoists had first made the attempt in 2012 when its leader Baburam Bhattarai was PM. It was made again when there was a coalition government including CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) in 2016.
Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel in the then KP Sharma Oli government had allocated Rs 840 million to pay Rs 200,000 each to the disqualified combatants and to those who had opted for voluntary retirement but had not received the lump sum in the budget for the fiscal year 2073/74.
That distribution was stopped when a few NC cadres and conflict victims moved the Supreme Court (SC) against the decision.
Dahal has now become PM for the third time. It has already been 15 years since he first became PM. It may not have been unnatural for him to have more rebellious attitude and less responsibility toward the state. But the determination showed by Dahal to try to pay his cadres from the state coffers when he has become PM for the third time is irresponsible. It shows that he has failed to understand the sensitivity of current times and his responsibility toward the general public.
The country is currently in a difficult economic situation. Not only Nepal, the whole world is affected by recession. In South Asia, all countries except India are going through a difficult economic situation. Those countries, including Nepal, have taken assistance from the International Monetary Fund to sustain the economy.
The recession has also affected the market and the general public. Many businesses have not been able to pay salaries on time. Many have furloughed their staff. The businesses themselves are in a tight spot as they are not able to pay the bank’s interest. Then there’s the mental stress of those with fixed income who have to pay installments to banks. The government has not been able to collect revenues due to the recession. If the situation worsens further, a situation could arise where it would be difficult to provide salaries to employees and to service debts.
How can the act of PM, who should be leading the job of extricating the country from this economic challenge, doling out nearly a billion rupees from the state coffers to his cadres in the name of combatants be justified at such a time? The patience of general public toward the government is already wearing thin.
We, therefore, politely advise those in the government to never do something that they cannot publicly defend and justify. The dissatisfaction of people 2can explode any time if you try to further test their patience, and that will not spare anyone.
