By Our Reporter
It seems Nepal’s political parties tend to act under the guidance of foreign powers, not according to the mandate given to them by the people.
The political developments of the past two months are evidence of this. When the voters gave a mandate to the pre-election alliance of the Nepali Congress, the CPN (Maoist Centre) and other smaller parties, making the Nepali Congress the largest party in the House of Representatives, the alliance collapsed when Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda of the Maoist Centre insisted that he should be made the new Prime Minister. And the CPN-UML chair KP Sharma Oli cashed in on Prachanda’s greed to break the alliance of the NC and Maoist Centre and Prachanda became PM based on the December 25 agreement.
However, when the election of the President was yet to be fixed, foreign powers started meddling in Nepal’s politics by sending one envoy after another to Nepal to prevent a communist from becoming the new president. Ministers and high-level officials from the USA, EU, India and Korea visited Nepal and met the leaders.
When Indian Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra landed in Kathmandu on February 13 and met almost all leaders during his two-day stay in Kathmandu, many suspected that he might have come to prevent the election of UML leader in the post of the president. And a week after his visit, the political course changed as was suspected.
The alliance of the UML and the Maoist Centre collapsed and a new alliance of eight parties was forged with a single goal of electing NC’s candidate to the post of President a week after Kwatra’s Nepal visit.
Four days after PM Prachanda decided to back Ram Chandra Paudel of NC in the presidential election, swift changes were noticed in politics. Rastriya Prajatantra Party and the UML quit the government. Rastriya Swatantra Party had already been out of the government. Now PM Prachanda is holding the portfolio of 16 ministries, and the NC is likely to join the government before the March 9 election of the president. The latest development shows that the foreign powers succeeded to change the power equation as they had expected.
Login to add a comment