Nepal’s King Gyanendra caved in Friday after two weeks of pro-democracy protests and asked the opposition to name a new prime minister in a speech to the nation.
”We return the executive power of the country to the people,” he said on state-owned Nepal television. ”We request the seven-party alliance to recommend a name for the post of prime minister who will have the responsibility to run the government.”
”The present council ministers will continue to function until the appointment of the prime minister. We are committed to multiparty democracy and to constitutional monarchy,” said the grim-faced monarch who spoke slowly in Nepali. ”We hope peace and order is restored in the country.”
The alliance launched a nationwide general strike on April 6 to force the king to relinquish the absolute power he grabbed in February 2005 when he sacked the government.
The monarch responded with a security clampdown that left more than a dozen dead, hundreds wounded and even more under arrest.
The opposition refused to back down and called on Thursday for the strike to be stepped up.
Protests
Tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets of Kathmandu on Thursday and again on Friday despite a curfew and shoot-on-sight orders.
The two weeks of demonstrations left a dozen people dead, hundreds wounded and even more under arrest.
India sent a top envoy on Thursday to tell the king he must open a real dialogue with the opposition to halt the bloodshed. The United Nations repeatedly called for the restoration of democracy and respect for human rights.
The authorities imposed curfew and shoot-on-sight orders on the capital for the second day running on Friday, the 16th day of a general strike, but there were no reports of shooting.
Mass protests were still swelling in the early evening and filling with smiling faces, an Agence France-Presse reporter said. People were coming out of their houses to join the crowds.
The biggest turnout was on the western rim at Kalanki where the crowd spilled kilometres along the Ring Road.
Armed police and troops did not intervene to block the mass of people on the edge of the curfew zone as happened on Thursday, when three protesters where shot dead at Kalanki and scores wounded.
”The crowds stretched over some 8km. They’ve been coming past me for 40 minutes and it’s not over yet,” said Rupesh Nepal, of the Nepalese rights group Informal Sector Service Centre. He estimated the number of demonstrators at more than 100 000.
Gyanendra sacked the government in 2005, blaming politicians for failing to hold elections and to tackle a deadly Maoist insurgency, which has left about 12 500 people dead in a decade.
He had already dissolved Parliament in 2002, leaving squabbling political parties to succeed each other in revolving door governments.
‘Excessive measures’
Meanwhile, the Austrian presidency of the European Union on Friday condemned ”excessive measures” taken by the Nepalese government to crack down on pro-democracy protesters.
”The European Union, with the whole of the international community, has been following with mounting concern the deterioration of the situation in Nepal,” a statement said.
It added: ”The Presidency of the EU roundly condemns the use of … excessive measures by government forces to curb pro-democracy protests in Kathmandu and elsewhere in Nepal,” noting that ”the use of live ammunition against demonstrators marks a watershed in the crisis”.
The EU also called on the Himalayan nation to respect freedom of the media and issue passes to allow ambulance service and representatives of international organisations to operate freely despite an imposed curfew. — AFP
