The stalemate over the new Constitution in Nepal continued on Wednesday with the two major political alliances blaming each other for the delay in reaching a consensus on the dispute.
The Constituent Assembly has been adjourned until Thursday after Opposition members continued their obstruction against the ruling coalition’s attempt to adopt CA procedures on deciding issues of the new Constitution. CA Chairperson Subas Nembang adjourned the assembly five minutes after it convened. This is the third consecutive day of obstruction by the alliance led by UCPN (Maoist) which includes Madhes-based parties.
Two former Prime Ministers from the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML accused the UCPN (Maoist) and the Madhes-based parties of blocking the passing of the Constitution through Constituent Assembly. “They have begun obstruction of the CA with the sole purpose of not allowing it to pass the statute,” former Prime Minister and former chief of the CPN-UML, Jhala Nath Khanal told mediapersons after coming out of the CA hall. “However, we will promulgate the Constitution in a month.”
Similarly, another former Prime Minister and senior leader of the Nepali Congress Sher Bahadur Deuba told the media that all the parties should work together to honour their commitment on the timely statute. “We cannot promulgate the Constitution tomorrow but at least the Maoists should cooperate on forming a questionnaire committee,” he said .
The Chairman of the UCPN (Maoist), however, blamed Prime Minister Sushil Koirala of preventing consensus between political parties on the contentious subjects. The parties have not been able to reconcile their differences on federalism, model of governance and electoral system. The deadline to promulgate the Constitution is Thursday. The CA-cum-Parliament was elected in 2013 with a four-year term. The parties set January 22 as deadline to promulgate the Constitution.
Meanwhile, NC, UML and parties supporting the ruling coalition including two independent lawmakers issued a joint statement saying they were firm on forming the questionnaire committee on taking the Constitution-writing process forward. They also criticised the vandalism by Maoist-led alliance members in the CA in the wee hours of Tuesday.
The UCPN (Maoist) admitted some mistakes were made in the CA on Tuesday. But it blamed the government for provoking it.
