Letter from Nepal:The political temperature in Nepal is rising as elections approach in November, writes Jas Kaminski.
The poll was originally scheduled for before the summer monsoon rains but the election commission declared the country ill-prepared and postponed them to November, just before the annual winter snowfalls that covers much of the Himalayan country.
The logistics of holding elections in the highest country on earth gives climatic considerations greater importance than usual, to ensure 17 million people vote in the 240 constituencies in 75 districts throughout the rugged mountains and southern lowlands of Nepal.
The electorate has also not exercised its franchise in nationwide elections since 1999.
Free and fair elections are made no easier by political squabbling between parties of the interim government and newly vocal groups, which risks casting these historic elections as the climax of a series of unfortunate incidents rather than the dawn of a new peaceful political era that so many hope for.
The stakes are high in this delicate political transition which, if successful, will see the world's only Hindu kingdom move into a more open and democratic phase, and leave behind a violent Maoist insurgency that cost up to 15,000 lives over a 10-year period.
Political tensions have spilt over into ethnic and communal violence in the past six months, causing many to wonder if elections can take place in this atmosphere of hostility and recrimination.
The past few months have seen the unleashing of a Pandora's box of dangerous nationalist forces in a country made up of different ethnic groups.
Marginalised underclasses from the agrarian lowlands, Dalits and other ethnic groups in the hierarchical Hindu caste system are claiming their right to participate in the new political order - and rocking the political establishment of Brahmin and Chetri peoples who have traditionally ruled Nepal.
Much of the south of the country, known as the Terai, which runs along the strategically important Indian border has seen government offices shut as local Madeshi leaders have applied a combination of terrorist and civil disobedience tactics to effectively remove the government's presence from the area.
Calling for greater representation in the new parliament, the Madeshi are threatening to block elections for up to 40 per cent of the electorate in their bailiwick.
The Maoists and the king loom large on the political stage, and also threaten to overshadow the November elections.
The government announced it is finally nationalising up to 10 palaces and properties, including the king's residence, the Narayanhiti royal palace in Kathmandu. And the army top brass has issued instructions to remove royal pictures and slogans from its barracks around the country.
This is bound to anger King Gyanendra and his supporters, who have had to painfully watch as power slowly but surely slips away to a Brahmin-dominated political class in parliament.
If elections go ahead, the king's future role and fate will be decided at the first meeting of the newly elected assembly, as per the Comprehensive Peace Accord, signed last November by leaders of the political parties and the Maoists, aka the Communist Party Nepal.
And while the suspended king is playing his cards close to his chest, it is believed his supporters are fanning the flames of the disaffected within the country, and hoping to disrupt the elections and discredit the present democratic experiment.
At the other end of the spectrum, it is difficult to see how the Maoists will do well at the ballot box, as much of their political achievements to date have come about by armed force.
And while constituent elections have been a core demand of the Maoists' 10-year insurgency, they too seem to be wavering on their commitment to hold elections.
Recent statements and actions by the revolutionary party and its cadre make it clear that some elements within it remain unconvinced by their leaders' commitment to the political process.
Intimidation, wildcat strikes, foot-dragging on UN-supervised registration and on disarmament, and the Maoists' open contempt of democratic norms underlie tensions within the movement and ambivalence towards elections.
It would be the ultimate irony to find the Maoists in the same camp as their bête noire, King Gyanendra, by seeming to oppose Nepal's historic poll.
It would also represent a great loss for the people of Nepal, who have suffered the consequences of both monarchy and war.