Speaking at the Constituent Assembly, an elected body that the Maoists don't want to refer to as 'parliament', Prime Minister Dahal showed just how confused he is about his party's future ideological course.
He said: "We are at the cusp of transformation. We need to manage this transformation and take ourselves beyond the status quo. The people need to see a qualitative improvement in their lives. But because of the prevailing situation, we can neither reach our goal of communism, nor can we stay stuck in traditional parliamentary politics."
Ever since that speech on 14 September, existing doubts about the Maoists' commitment to parliamentary democracy have resurfaced and intensified. These doubts have not been allayed. In fact, subsequent pronouncements by senior Maoists have raised even more serious misgivings.
Dahal is right on one point: not only is it unrealistic to expect Nepal to become communist, it is doubtful if we can even be socialist in the true sense. Dahal himself has admitted that feudalism has not been completely uprooted, and we need to move from that through an economic revolution towards capitalism. But his hardline political stance doesn't fit the economic rhetoric.
The Maoists have been describing their current ideological line as a 'fusion', but it's looking more like 'confusion'. And because they are now leading the government, this contradiction is hurting the country. This lack of clarity doesn't just reflect on Comrade Prachanda but on Prime Minsiter Dahal, and through him, on the government he leads.
What is hard to explain is Dahal's allergy to the words 'parliament' and 'democracy' despite his party having come this far into the peace process. During the war, the main targets of the Maoists were the monarchy, multi-party democracy, parliament and the parliamentary parties. In this, the Maoists made common cause with conservative royalists who also wanted to weaken parliamentary democracy.