CPN (Maoist Centre) chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has yet again made the call. At the party central committee meeting that concluded on Tuesday, the party supremo asked central and provincial committee members to submit the details of their incomes as well as income sources. Dahal issued the instruction after some leaders at the meeting questioned the unusual change in living standards and lifestyles of a section of Maoists after they joined mainstream politics in 2006. Maoist leaders accumulating disproportionate amounts of property have attracted public criticism, thus eroding the image of the former rebel party.

Dahal on Tuesday instructed party leaders to submit income details applying his usual tactics. Making an announcement and pacifying party leaders who raise voice for reforms is the strategy he has used for decades. Over a decade ago, Dahal had formed a panel under the leadership of senior leader Amik Sherchan to study Maoist leaders’ property and submit a report to the party leadership. Sherchan did as instructed but the party headquarters never made the report public.

Maoist leaders’ demand for the probe is understandable as it appears that a section of leaders from the party are corrupt. Some key leaders and their family members have been indicted in corruption cases. Police last year arrested party vice-chair and former Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara, his son Rahul; son of former Vice President and now party vice-chair Nanda Bahadur Pun, Dipesh; among others, in a gold smuggling case. Later, former Speaker Mahara was released on a condition that he appears when summoned. These are some representative examples.

Party cadres—who were comrades in arms with Dahal, Mahara and Pun during the war—bite their tongue seeing the current lavish lifestyles of top leaders and their family members. Some party members still find it hard to believe; these were the same leaders who had voluntarily handed over their property to the party when joining the insurgency. While it is a matter of disbelief for party cadres, it also breeds public disillusionment towards the Maoist leadership.

Some leaders publicly admit that they have been distanced from downtrodden communities while top party leaders are hobnobbing with the well-off class. They also confess that the working class and oppressed communities feel betrayed by the party. Thus, conceptually, the idea of making leaders’ income and its sources public is not a bad idea. If done earnestly, it can be the start of meaningful reform.

But does Dahal have the moral ground to ask his party leaders to submit income details to party headquarters? At first, party members want transparency in financial dealings of party chair Dahal, who lives in a house belonging to a controversial businessman Sharada Prasad Adhikari. Separately, he has never given a convincing answer on alleged irregularities of billions of rupees while managing cantonments to house over 19,000 Maoist combatants in various parts of the country.

During his last premiership, he flouted the state’s policy of making public Cabinet ministers’ property details. The policy was adopted after the 1990 political change to make public office holders who get money from state coffers accountable and transparent. All this is to say that if Dahal is committed to accountability and transparency in the party, he has to first embody those traits. Party members will invariably follow.