August 16, 2008	Saturday	Sha'aban 13, 1429

KATHMANDU, Aug 15: Lawmakers elected a Maoist who led a decade-long insurgency against the Hindu monarchy as Nepal’s new prime minister on Friday, marking the Himalayan nation’s radical change into a democratic republic.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the chief of once-feared Maoist guerrillas who still uses his nom de guerre Prachanda, won 464 votes out of 577 ballots cast in a special Constituent Assembly vote after weeks of political battles.

Lawmakers hugged a beaming Prachanda, who said: “I am very excited at this moment.” Outside the assembly, hundreds of Maoist supporters danced, many waving hammer-and-sickle flags.

“Long live the Maoists, long live Prachanda,” they shouted as their bespectacled leader, wearing a black suit and blue shirt, emerged from the assembly. They put garlands around his neck and daubed his forehead with vermilion as he smiled and waved to the crowd.

The election opens the way for the formation of a new government, capping a peace process that ended a civil war in which more than 13,000 people died since 1996.

Prachanda defeated Sher Bahadur Deuba, a three-time former prime minister from a centrist party. His colleague, Baburam Bhattarai, seen as number two in the Maoist hierarchy, said Maoist politicians including Prachanda will no longer hold any posts in the Maoist rebel army and will return property seized by them during the war.

“Today is a day of pride and it will be written with golden letters in the history of the nation,” Bhattarai said.

The Maoists scored a surprise win in a special assembly election in April but did not get a parliamentary majority, prompting a battle for power that left Nepal struggling to form a new government four months after the polls.

The assembly abolished the 239-year-old monarchy and declared the mountainous nation a republic in May.—Reuters