KATMANDU, Nepal — Nepal’s national assembly chose the leader of the nation’s former rebels as prime minister Friday, two years after he gave up a bloody insurgency and joined the peace process.
Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), had been widely expected to win because he had the backing of the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist), the Madeshi People’s Rights Forum and several smaller parties. His own party won the most seats in April elections but fell short of a majority.
Prachanda, whose name is a nom de guerre from his rebel days meaning “the fierce one,” was chosen by a 464-113 vote of the assembly, said Constituent Assembly chairman Subash Nemwang. He defeated Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress party.
During a decade underground, Prachanda — whose real name is Pushpa Kamal Dahal — turned a small band of followers armed with primitive muskets and knives into a feared, well-equipped force of several thousand fighters.
He appointed himself the supreme commander of his People’s Liberation Army and advocated a communist revolution he called “Prachandapath.” Opponents were crushed, with dissenters demoted or placed under house arrest.
The communists’ decades-long rebellion plunged the Himalayan kingdom into a conflict that killed 13,000.
