At a press meet on Saturday, the Socialist Front Nepal, a grouping of four leftist parties—the CPN (Maoist Centre), the CPN (Unified Socialist), the Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal and the Netra Bikram Chand-led Communist Party of Nepal—announced a series of rallies. The rallies, to be held in Kathmandu on March 28, are aimed at foiling “the conspiracies of reactionary forces” in order to “safeguard the republican set-up”. The rallies are a reaction to the pro-royalist marches in the national capital last Sunday. That day’s marches saw better-than-expected public support, enthusing the pro-monarchy forces. While the country’s two biggest pro-republican parties—the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML—have been institutionally silent on recent activism of the monarchists, the smaller opposition forces have decided that enough is enough. If the monarchists are not stopped, they seem to have calculated, the country might go into the hands of the regressive forces. It is their right to protest, too—just like the royalists had the right to take out pro-monarchy protests. Yet the tone being set by the front’s leaders is rather problematic.

Take Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the Maoist Centre chair and the front’s de facto leader. In the past few days, he has leveled all kinds of accusations at the ex-monarch, Gyanendra Shah. Dahal has held Shah responsible for the killing of his brother, Birendra and accused the ex-king of being involved in the smuggling of gold and in the theft of statutes. Such personal accusations are unwarranted. Nor is it for the Maoist chair to pronounce someone guilty of a crime. Instead, by making such accusations, Dahal and other pro-republican forces are weakening their case. If they are so confident of the public support for the post-2006 progressive changes, why can’t they challenge the royalists on principles? Or have the likes of Dahal—and even Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, who too likes to take personal jibes at Shah—lost faith in the political beliefs they once championed? Otherwise, why betray such desperation when a few thousand people hit the streets in monarchy’s support—when hundreds of thousands of Nepalis had in a not too distant past turned up to oust the same autocratic monarch?

Despite some of its flaws, there is a strong case to be made in favour of the new federal republic. It has taken development to the grassroots. It has been a staunch protector of free speech and other democratic freedoms. The system sits well with Nepal’s rich diversity. In any case, ex-king Gyanendra himself so badly discredited himself while on the throne—by jailing politicians and members of civil society and suspending civil liberties—that the return of the same king is not a tenable proposition. Even if the contender for the king was someone more worthy, the 21st century progressive Nepal cannot go back to the days of hereditary rule. It is sad to see that Dahal, who was perhaps the biggest proponent of the new system, has seemingly forgotten all the principles he once fought for and now believes the only way to counter the royalist narrative is through personal attacks. We expect better from the defenders of the federal republic.