The Nepal peace process has been staggering on now for nearly six years, since the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) of November 2006. The CPA deadlines for agreeing a new constitution and electing a new government have been broken again and again.
Nepali politics are now floating in a void, with no agreement on how to move forward given that there is no constitutional basis for the government that now exists. The options being pushed at the time of going to press were: fresh elections; the temporary revival of the constituent assembly elected in April 2008 and laid to rest on 27 May 2012; and ‘a round table conference between major stake holders of the country’.
On 15 August, the main Maoist party (Unified Communist Party of Nepal [Maoist]) formed a coalition with a number of ethnically-based political parties from the United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF), and other Madhesi and Janjati groupings. Madhesis are people from the lowland Terai area; the Janjati are indigenous peoples from the middle hills.
The new coalition, the Federal Democratic Republican Alliance, is committed to an ethnically-based form of federalism, which may be able to draw federalist supporters away from other political parties.