Maoist Finance Minister Baburam Bhattarai stirred a hornet's nest by announcing in Washington and Doha last week that his party had been debating whether or not to keep the 'Maoist' suffix on its name. Then Prime Minister Dahal said that it was originally his proposal to drop the Maoist suffix because his party was in power and it "didn't need it anymore". Despite some murmurings from hardliners within the party, the matter would have rested at that.

But the UML suddenly announced on Saturday after their national cadre meeting that it would make a decision on dropping UML and renaming the party just CPN. UML general secretary, Jhalnath Khanal said the decision on this would be taken at a party convention in Butwal early next year. Khanal however rejected the possibility of unification with the Maoists stating their extremism was an obstacle, but he said having a united communist party would be ideal.

"The Maoists have to give up politics of violence, extremism and fundamentalism if they want to go for a single communist party in the country," he said.

If both parties are going to be called CPN, then some analysts say, the Maoists and UML may as well just merge. The debate comes at a time when there is internal debate going on within the Maoist party about whether to take the the people's republic line or the democratic republic one.

Nepali communist parties have suffixes like Marxists, Leninists, Manandhar, Unified, Unity Centre, Masal and Mashal to differentiate them from each other. They adopted the names based on either who founded the party, or the ideological leanings of the party which historically have reflected splits in the international communist movement.

"After the collapse of the Soviet Union we took up Maoist tag to show that our party was revolutionary but now even Mao has become pass?," Baburam Bhattarai said in a television interview on Saturday, "but this doesn't mean we stopped being revolutionary if we drop Maoist from our party name."

The communist movement in Nepal has a history of over half a century. There are many breakups and as many mergers over this time. But the issue of dropping the Maoist suffix has come at a time when all communist parties are part of the multi-party system.

The Maoists and the CPN Unity Centre are also unifying very soon despite opposition within both parties to the merger.