Top Stories»
PM pooh-poohs Gautam quit call
KATHMANDU, APR 23 -
Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, who has held the fort despite many quit calls, mainly from the main opposition UCPN (Maoist), dealt with yet another quit call on Friday. This time, the appeal came from none other than fellow party leader — CPN-UML Vice Chairman Bam Dev Gautam.
While Gautam, for the first time in public, asked Nepal to quit for the sake of a national consensus government, the prime minister preferred to trot out his usual line.
“I will resign only when the party’s Central Committee (CC) and coalition partners decide to call me back, officially. However, such a move should first guarantee the success of the statue-drafting and peace processes,” Nepal said on the occasion of the founding day of the Communist Party of Nepal at the UML headquarters in Balkhu.
The CC, where Nepal is strong, is yet to take a call on the fate of the government, though the UML Parliamentary Party has decided to go for a national consensus government replacing the party-led dispensation. However, a majority of UML Constituent Assembly members (70 out of 109) have asked the prime minister to quit.
Gautam took the occasion to lambaste Nepal for sticking to power “even after failing to forge a consensus among parties for two major goals — drafting the statue and taking the peace process to a logical conclusion.”
“If he (prime minister) fails to take the Maoists into confidence, he must quit.” Gautam went on to accuse Nepal, credited with bringing the Maoists into the ‘mainstream’, of conspiring to invite confrontation at the expense of consensus politics. “Some leaders are provoking senior officials of Nepal Army. Do such acts not undermine his (Nepal)’s past efforts aimed at bringing peace?,” Gautam asked.
Nepal, meanwhile termed Gautam a Maoist spokesman, while Gautam discovered in the prime minister ‘a leader of opportunists’. With the two senior UML leaders mudslinging each other publicly, supporters also started taking sides. But the meet went on smoothly after Gautam directed his supporters not to clap in support of his speech.
Posted on: 2010-04-24 08:02
Headlines
Advertisements
