KATHMANDU (AFP) - - Nepal's Maoists, on track for victory in landmark elections, on Wednesday called on the country's embattled king to step down "gracefully" or else face a humiliating eviction from his palace.
The call came as the former rebels maintained a strong lead in the count from last Thursday's vote on the impoverished country's political future.
The Maoists so far look set to dominate a 601-seat assembly that will rewrite Nepal's constitution, and have said their first act will be to sack King Gyanendra and abolish his 240-year-old monarchy.
"The best thing for the king would be to bow out gracefully to pave the way for a democratic republic," Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoists' second-in-command, told AFP.
The process of getting rid of the monarchy, he said, was now unstoppable.
"In the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly we will declare the country a republic, then we will notify the king to leave the palace," Bhattarai said in an interview.
"As an ordinary citizen, he will have to abide by the law."
Gyanendra ascended the throne in 2001 when his brother and predecessor, King Birendra, was shot dead along with eight other family members by a drunk and lovelorn crown prince, who in turn killed himself.
In 2005 he seized absolute power to fight the Maoists, but instead fuelled a wave of republican sentiment that led to a historic 2006 peace deal culminating in last week's polls.
In his first meeting with business leaders in the capital, Maoist leader Prachanda -- whose nom-de-guerre means "the fierce one" -- promised "economic miracles" for the aid-dependent Himalayan country.
"We have been given a chance to lead the government and we now think that this responsibility is to bring economic miracles in the country," he said late Wednesday.
"People might not believe that we can bring economic miracles, but we will prove it," said the former school teacher.
With the vote count ongoing in the dual first-past-the-post and proportional representation system, election officials said out of a total of 217 seats already allocated, the Maoists have won 116. Their nearest rival, the centrist Nepali Congress, has won just 32 seats.
Officials said counting for the 335 seats to be awarded by proportional representation was under way, with the results -- based on roughly 40 percent of returns -- so far showing the Maoists in the lead with a 31 percent share of the tallied votes.
"The Maoists have the highest percentage of votes so far, but we cannot know the number of seats they will be allocated until we have counted all the votes," election official Dilliram Bastola told AFP.
Counting in the proportional representation section of the vote will be finished by Tuesday or Wednesday next week, he said. The proportional representation leg of the counting was expected to give the Maoists an even greater boost, analysts said.
The Maoists' showing at the ballot box confounded analysts and diplomats who predicted the former rebels would do well to finish third.
"We have fought with the people for democratic change, and we know the masses," Bhattarai said. "We are more aware than the other parties about the problems Nepal faces."
Bhattarai however said that his party would continue to work with Nepal's mainstream parties in a new coalition government.
"We are confident we can work with other parties. There is no alternative as this was not a general election -- it was an election to make a new constitution," he said.
Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara said the ultra-leftists -- who remain on a US list of terrorist organisations -- could be trusted to run the country.
"We are not here today because of strength of arms -- we are here because the people sent us here," said Mahara.
"We are committed to the peace process, we are committed to democracy and I want to appeal to all sceptics not to doubt our commitment towards this people's verdict."
The Maoists launched an armed insurgency in 1996 with the aim of toppling the monarchy and establishing a communist republic. The conflict left at least 13,000 people dead, and came to an end with the 2006 peace deal.
