NCP on the verge of split
By Our Reporter
The ruling Nepal Communist Party is now on the verge of split, 31 months after the then CPN-UML led by KP Sharma Oli and the then Maoist-Centre led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal decided to merge their parties solely targeting the general elections of 2017.
When the two parties made a surprise announcement during Dashain of 2017, many people then had termed the decision as the then CPN-UML’s effort to be trapped in Dhritarastra’s embrace. In the Mahabharat, after the killing of his 99 sons by Bhima in the war, blind king Dhritarastra is so angry that he intends to kill Bhim, but lord Krishna knows this well and instead of allowing Bhim to hog the blind king, he puts an iron structure of the shape of Bhima, which Dhritarastra hogs and smashes into pieces thinking that it was Bhima. Now 31 months after the decision to unify the party Oli and Dahal are in war with an aim of finishing each other politically.
Although the two chairmen—Oli and Dahal—has been holding one meeting after another to sort out the differences, nobody knows, even the top NCP leaders, what will be next in the party as each one-on-one parley of the past six days have failed to find a meeting point. Leaders divided for and against PM Oli seem fuelling the dispute while the media are there to add fuel in the dispute by publishing false news.
Everyone knows the present seed of dispute in the party was sown by and for Bam Dev Gauatm, and the leaders have not been in good terms even after resolving the Gautam-bred brawl. The latest dispute surfaced after PM Oli, while addressing the birth anniversary of Madan Bhandari, accused the party leaders, without mentioning their names, of involving in conspiracy hatched by India to oust him. His speech irked the leaders leading to the current crisis in the party, as the top leaders thought the statement was targeted towards them.
One could see similarities between the current dispute in the NCP and in the NC after the by-election of Kathmandu-1 in1994. The NC dispute 26 years ago culminated in the dissolution of the House of Representatives for mid-term polls and since then Nepal plunged into political instability providing the Maoists a breeding ground to escalate its killing spree.
Then Girija Prasad Koirala was PM and general secretary of NC and Krishna Prasad Bhattarai party president, who enjoyed majority in the central committee and Koirala in parliament as well as masses. Now Prachnada-Nepal group enjoys majority in the party and Oli in parliament and among party cadres.
Considering the failure of one meeting after another, the deadlock in the party is like to continue for more days. The situation is such that the Dahal-Nepal camp cannot oust Oli fearing division in the party and Oli does not budge his stance not to quit the two posts.
The one-on-one meeting between Oli and Dahal ended inconclusively also on Monday and Tuesday.
Although a few second-generation leaders have been trying their best to resolve the crisis, their efforts have not yielded any results by the time this story was prepared.
Every meeting lasted for over two hours and ended with an agreement to hold another meeting. However, the details of the meeting were not made public.
After the chairmen failed to forge consensus, the Standing Committee meeting of the party was put off to provide more time for the two chairs to reach a consensus.
As it is still not sure whether the party will divide or will the PM resign, the political situation of the country looks gloomy.
When the meeting of the 44-member standing committee that has begun since June 24 has been postponed, a section of the leaders have been demanding central committee meeting of the party to sort out the differences.
Again there are conflicting reports about the formation of a task force, including two leaders each from the two sides—one led by PM Oli and another by Dahal, to find a middle point to settle the dispute.
The task force was said to be formed under the General Secretary Bishnu Poudel and Energy Minister Barshaman Pun with Standing Committee members Shanker Pokharel and Janaradan Sharma as members. The taskforce is said to do homework to sort out the differences. But this task force has again increased mistrust within Dahal-Nepal camp as Nepal took it as a conspiracy against him.
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