Anil Giri
Pushpa Kamal Dahal is a man divide.
At the final session of Kantipur Conclave last week, Pushpa Kamal, dressed in a dark suit with a matching topi and a silk tie, appeared relaxed and confident, speaking at length about himself, his journey and his ambitions.
“I have no desire to become prime minister any time soon,” he said.
But Pushpa Kamal had only just put Prachanda to rest. In vying for power with co-chair and prime minister KP Sharma Oli, Prachanda had pulled off a Machiavellian feat, turning Oli’s former UML allies against him. Prachanda’s man, Agni Sapkota, became Speaker of the House of Representatives over Oli’s choice of Subas Nembang.
“He seized the offensive,” Lekhnath Poudel, a central committee member of the party told the Post on Sunday, describing Dahal’s tactics.
When he is Pushpa Kamal, meaning lotus flower, he is charming, effusive and pragmatic, like he was last week at the conclave. When he is Prachanda, or the fierce one, he is seen as devious, insidious and crafty, like he was over the Speaker affair.
In the 14 years since the Maoist insurgency that he led as supreme commander came to an end, Pushpa Kamal has increasingly attempted to shed Prachanda. But he remains torn between becoming the consummate politician and remaining the quintessential commander.
No one knows more about this identity crisis than Dahal himself, who has admitted to being conflicted about who he really is.
“I feel different each time I am called by a different name,” he said in July last year at a cultural programme. “When people call me Prachanda, I feel like I represent the entire country. I take pride in fighting for identity, equality, the rights of indigenous and underprivileged people and backward communities, the people and social justice. But when I am called Pushpa Kamal Dahal, I feel like I represent just one community—something which is limited and confined to a small conservative circle.”
But Dahal is a man of contradiction; both Prachanda and Pushpa Kamal reside within him. He appears to switch at will, like Jekyll and Hyde, transforming into Prachanda when he needs to make a fiery speech or play political chess and back into Pushpa Kamal when he needs to placate opposing factions and win over the media.
And this is not a recent phenomenon. Ever since he emerged from the underground in 2006, Dahal has always been torn been torn.
From The Kathmandu Post
