Within the week that is left in the life of the Constiuent Assembly (CA), there will either be an attempt at euthanasia, or the body will be rushed to the intensive care unit. Whatever happens, we should remember that this elected House represents a desire for peace among the people though a national consensus.

Since parliament will continue to function for a few days even after 28 May, one hears arguments that the CA should just be allowed to lapse since the other organs of state will still have legitimacy. That line of thought may or may not have legal validity, but it is absurd and unworkable. Some within the NC and UML seem to have surmised that a parliament without the CA will be beneficial to them. And the Maoists are rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of cashing in on the political vacuum and public anger if the CA is not revived.

If the CA is dissolved, the peace process comes to a halt. In such a case those in the NC and UML who think they'll benefit will be in for a rude shock. Those who believe in the politics of the gun, of course, will rejoice. And if the country goes back to conflict, the two sides within Nepal will be fighting a proxy war for the national interests of our big neighbours.

Let's use the week before the CA expires to chart a course post-28 May. Blaming CA members for the past year is not going to get us anywhere. The constitution is only going to work if the politics are fixed first. The CA is not supposed to mend the politics of this country, it is supposed to give legitimacy to a political agreement. But if we go on trying to finish each other off, then the constitution is going to be dead, and we will all soon follow.

Hopefully, the urgency of it all will allow us to find the political consensus on power-sharing to be able to extend the CA and then get the peace process back on track. The parties tried to find a 'package deal' that would include the peace process, constitution and power-sharing. But it did not succeed because they were not negotiating in good faith. During and after the Maoist strike, marathon meetings tried to untangle the knots of army integration, but there was a deadlock. It is clear that the transformation of the Maoist party into a mainstream player cannot happen as long as it has an army.

It is also clear from public Maoist pronouncements that the constitution and peace process are sideshows for them. It is their self-declared goal that first and foremost is state power. The Maoists haven't given up their desire to come to power through the gun, and as long as that is the case nothing else will fall into place. Until the Maoists realise that a federal, secular republican Nepal will not be possible without liberal democracy and pluralism, everything else is just empty talk. And therein lies the knot that has tangled up the peace process.

There are so many contradictions in the Maoists' public statements and their stands in the committees of the CA that there is no space here to list them all. Their idea of a 'peaceful' strike is to brandish khukuris and staves, their idea of an agreement is to threaten interlocutors with a fist. They show one face to the Nepali public and another one to their sympathisers in the international community. Such duplicity does not build trust.

To be sure, it's not just the Maoists who are the obstacles. There are plenty of problems in the NC and UML too. But both are committed to the peace process and constitution-writing, they can't backtrack. They aren't the ones threatening to go back to violence. Their future in this country will not be determined by the gun, but by what they do here on to win the trust of the people.

The only way forward is the transformation of the Maoists into a mainstream party that plays by the rules, and the moral pressure that the other parties can bring to bear on them. They may not be able to agree on everything right away, but they must prolong the life of the CA and buy time to resolve those issues later and offer the Maoists another chance to change.

Gagan Thapa is an NC CA member. A longer version of this opinion was printed in Himal Khabarpatrika, 15-30 May.

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