By Our Political Analyst
CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal, who led the agitation demanding the reinstatement of the House of Representatives last year, has now started raising his voice in favour of the dissolution of the reinstated House.
Talking to media persons outside the Federal Parliament building on Sunday, Nepal said that the parties should be ready even to dissolve the parliament if the CPN-UML continues to obstruct the House meeting.
“Chairman KP Oli has not allowed the house to function properly for a long time. It is better to dissolve the house if it remains as it is. There will neither be a parliament nor any obstructions,” he said.
The CPN-UML has been obstructing the house sessions after Speaker Agni Sapkota did not take any action against 14 UML lawmakers including Madhav Kumar Nepal, who formed a new party CPN (Unified Socialist) by dividing the UML.
Obviously, leader Nepal floated the idea with the hope of winning respectable seats in the parliament election by forging an electoral alliance with the Nepali Congress and the Maoist Centre.
Nepal’s CPN (Unified Socialist) benefitted from the alliance in the National Assembly elections held last month. Leader Nepal floated the idea of fresh elections at a time when the Nepali Congress leaders of the rival faction have been opposing the idea of forging alliance with any party in the elections. Even on Monday, NC leader Shekhar Koirala said that NC would help Nepal and Pushpa Kamal Dahal for their elections, but forging an electoral alliance would not be accepted.
However, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and even leader Ram Chandra Paudel are in favour of an electoral alliance among the ruling parties. Deuba and Paudel fear an alliance among the Maoist Centre and the CPN-UML in parliamentary elections as in 2017 if the NC rejected to form such alliance. Again, Deuba does not want to deceive Dahal and Nepal without whose help he would not have become Prime Minister.
However, the CPN-UML has interpreted Nepal’s view dissolving the House as a ploy to postpone the local level elections, which was outright rejected by government spokesperson and Minister for Communication and Information Technology Gyanendra Bahadur Karki.
And if the House is dissolved and the ruling parties continue their alliance in elections as desired by leader Nepal, the CPN-UML will face the fate that NC faced in the 2017 parliamentary elections.
However, when the NC leaders with a popular base like Shekhar Koirala and Gagan Thapa have been opposing the idea of electoral alliance citing that the NC could win majority seats if it contested the elections alone, leader Nepal looks suspicious of the continuity of alliance if the parliamentary elections are held in November. If the NC ends the alliance, Maoist Centre can forge an alliance with the CPN-UML, but Nepal cannot. As such, Nepal wants to avoid such a scenario and wants to go for an early election so that the ruling parties could stand together in elections.
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