The taskforce will submit its draft at the meeting of top political leaders. If there is agreement, the political logjam will end, the House will resume, and the budget will be approved

KATHMANDU, NOV 18 - In a bid to forge consensus to end the derailed political process and meet the demands of the main opposition Unified CPN(Maoist), a meeting of the big three—the Maoists, Nepali Congress and CPN-UML—on Wednesday decided to amend the content of the proposed joint resolution motion. If the parties can work out an acceptable joint resolution or agree to draw attention on the president’s move, the House will resume and the budget will pass. The thorny issue of a separate package might take more time. “Replacing this government or reconstituting it will fi-gure at later meetings,” UML chief whip Bhim Acharya said after the meeting. As of now, there is no chance of replacing this government he said. 

To thrash out this issue, a mee-ting of top leaders of the three parties revived the taskforce set up a month ago, which will submit its final draft at the meeting of top leaders scheduled for Thursday afternoon.

The parties had earlier formed a taskforce to prepare a joint resolution motion—a ‘win-win’ formula—to address the Maoist demand for correction of the president’s move. The revived taskforce comprises Dev Gurung of UCPN(Maoist), Arjun Narsingh K. C. of NC and Yubraj Gyawali of UML. “We agreed to revive the earlier taskforce to work on the content of the joint resolution. It will submit its draft at the meeting of top political leaders. If there is agreement, the political logjam will end, the House will resume, and the budget will be approved,” said Maoist Vice Chair Narayan Kaji Shrestha.

The members of the taskforce will meet Thursday morning.

Maoists want to say directly that the president made a mistake on the then Army chief issue. Although Maoist leaders forwarded the proposal of a package in a bid to end the political deadlock, NC and UML leaders pushed a different idea focusing on immediate endorsement of the budget. “Our meeting is heading in a positive direction,” said Shrestha.

After agreement to rework the resolution motion, K.C. said the taskforce would try to find a way to address the Maoist demand without hurting or blaming the president,  “We proposed endorsement of the budget first and then continuation of dialogue on issues like the peace process and statute writing. But the Maoists did not agree,” K. C. said.

Post Your Comment

Please note that all the fields marked * are mandatory.

* Full Name

* Address

* Email Address

* Comment
[Some of the HTML tags you can use : <b>, <i>, <a>]

* Captcha

[ If you have any difficulty in reading the CAPTCHA please click on it to get another code.]