I respect Mr. Dixit as Nepal's senior most journalist, and have learned a lot reading his pieces here and there, every once in a while. However, being a novice in politics, and almost a late-started in Nepali politics, I have some questions based on reading this emailed piece. "What is clear is that this has been a radical step exposing the institution of kingship to flak, when other approaches could have been tried. " What othera pproaches are/were there? Of course, its easy to blame the King. But do you believe we had other options? The only option was: The political parties and the King work together to resolve the crisis. I think this is what the King wanted in 2002, but the political parties were not willing to coopearate with the king then, or in the aftermath of Oct. 14, 2002. Furthermore, the parties were divided themselves. The King had no option than to appoint a govt. of his picking, and that's what he did. The political parties instead of supporting teh Chand- govt. decided to go against it. The Chand govt. was making some progress (thanks to Mr. Pun) with the maoists, but the political parties through their street nataks, forced the King to oust the Chand-govt. Then came other govt.s and finally Deuba again. Again the political parties failed to unite for a common national cause. Politics is not what "it should be" it is, how can I maximize my interest in the present scenario. First you learn how to maximize your interests in the given circusmtances then try to find the ways to folloow up on your ideals. Our political parties and leaders just wnated to skip the "interests" part for the "ideal" part. So they turned out to be bad players. In this context, the King did what he thought he could do: You have adivision among the parties, people want peace than voting rights, and the political parties because of their insistence on voting rights but not living rights of the people of Nepal were alienating themselves from the masses. This is why the King could take over. The other option, which I think you have been proposing, i.e., resintating the parliament is making a mockery of the Supreme Court of the Kingdom of Nepal which gave its approval to the dissolution of the house by the PM. The Pm was exercising his constitutional rights, and the Supreme Court, which alone ahs the rights to interpret the constitution, found it very much in line with the constitution. Isn't it practicing double stanbdard when on teh one hand we say, the Oct. 14 was unconstitutional, on the other hand, we say, reinstate the parliament (reinstatement of the parliament is also uncosntitutional because there's no provision for this in the constitution). "King Gyanendra preferred to hark back to the Parliament dissolved three years ago, while keeping silent over interim period and rule through palace-appointed prime ministers. This is the period when the peace and security of the country?s populace plummeted more than previously. " I am not well versed in Nepali politics but as far as my little understanding goes, we lost a gloden oppurtunity because of the constant intra-party and inter-party feuds and sadak nataks in the last 3 years. If the Political Parties had put their ideals to rest for a short period and had collaborated with the King to solve teh maoist problem, instead of staging Sadak/Galli nataks, the Maoist problem would have probably solved by now. So instead of blaming the King, I blame the political parties, their corrupt leadership and their unpolitical ways that led to both Oct. 14 and Feb. 1.