Embattled King of Nepal Offers Gesture to Protesters

Manish Swarup/Associated Press

Police officers used clubs to break up an antimonarchy demonstration Friday in Katmandu. King Gyanendra said later that he would turn over power to a prime minister chosen by the political parties, but his statement seemed to bring little relief in the national crisis.

By SOMINI SENGUPTA
Published: April 22, 2006
KATMANDU, Nepal, April 21 — Nepal's embattled King Gyanendra said Friday evening that he would turn over the reins of government to a prime minister chosen by the country's principal political parties, but his gesture brought little relief to a nation on the verge of paralysis.
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Tomas van Houtryve for The New York Times
A photograph of King Gyanendra landed in a ditch Friday with other items tossed there by demonstrators in Katmandu, the Nepalese capital.
"Executive power of the Kingdom of Nepal, which was in our safekeeping, shall, from this day, be returned to the people," the king said, in a long-awaited, surprisingly short address on state-owned television.
Earlier Friday, more than 100,000 demonstrators flooded the heavily fortified main road in Katmandu, the capital, in defiance of a daylong shoot-on-sight curfew, gathering in the largest pro-democracy protests to date. By late evening, there was no official reaction from the country's political leaders, who were huddled in meetings and were to render their verdict on Saturday.
In a statement that said nothing about the king's address, the seven-party alliance that has led the demonstrators vowed to intensify the protests.
"The movement will continue like this until further notice," it read. "We call upon people from all walks of life to take to the streets and bring everything in the capital and all across the country to a complete halt."
The mood on the streets, swept by 16 days of often violent confrontations between pro-democracy protesters and the security forces, remained uneasy. At least 12 people have been killed by police officers and soldiers in the demonstrations, hundreds have been injured and several thousand arrested.
"There's nothing for those who were killed in these protests," Raj Narayan Thakur, 26, said of the king's speech, as bonfires burned on a street in a western suburb, Chabahil, and protesters milled around in the pitch dark.
"It doesn't work," said Bishwokiran Shakya, 46, with a brisk wave of his hand. "No good."
It remained unclear this evening whether the leaders of the seven-party alliance would seize the king's offer and, if they did, whether they could sell it to either the Nepalese people who have poured into the streets or the Maoist rebels with whom they have linked arms in a effort to wrest power from the palace.
In an accord signed last fall, the politicians agreed to the central Maoist demand for a referendum on the Constitution; in exchange, the Maoists agreed, among other things, to play by the rules of parliamentary democracy.
The king, who took over the government 14 months ago in what he said was an effort to defeat a Maoist rebellion, agreed to give up control of the state. But he did not address the two principal demands of the politicians and their foot soldiers on the street: restoration of the elected Parliament, suspended in May 2002, and a referendum to review the Constitution and decide whether Nepal still needs a king.
Calls for an end to monarchy, which is enshrined in the Nepalese Constitution, have grown louder and more brazen in the past weeks. The king's speech made it plain that he was in favor of maintaining the status quo: a multiparty democracy with a constitutional monarchy.
He spoke hours after Katmandu was engulfed in the largest protests to date, as several large neighborhood rallies converged on the sealed Ring Road that circles the city center. They shouted gleefully for the king's head, burned effigies and, at one point, toppled a small tin-roofed police post and set it alight, as a gantlet of police officers in riot gear, backed by soldiers, watched.
Apparently anticipating further discontent, the government extended the curfew on Friday evening until midnight.
There was no question that after two weeks of angry protests and a heavy-handed state crackdown, it will be harder for those clamoring for an end to Gyanendra's rule and the establishment of a democratic republic to accept any political deal that maintains the monarchy.
Favorable nods for the king came from abroad. Nepal's neighbor and most vital ally, India, swiftly endorsed the king's offer, saying in a statement that the king's words "should now pave the way for the restoration of political stability and economic recovery of the country."