Parties begin discussing statute issues

KATHMANDU: With the deadline for preparing the first draft of the new constitution approaching, the major political parties have begun formal and informal, intra-party and inter-party discussions on the contents of the new statute.
As per the Constituent Assembly schedule, it should prepare the first draft of the constitution within two months (October 17). The CA’s Constitutional-Political Dialogue and Consensus Committee should table its report at the CA’s full House by September 6 after forging consensus on disputed issues.
The Unified CPN-Maoist leader Baburam Bhattarai-led consensus committee is working on the disputed issues by forming different sub-committees to find common ground.
While leaders of the three major parties have also begun discussions at the informal level. Nepali Congress Vice president Ram Chandra Paudel, Madhav Nepal from UML and Narayan Kaji Shrestha of Unified CPN-Maoist are leading their respective parties in the inter-party talks.
NC’s Paudel and Mahesh Acharya and UCPN-M’s Shrestha and Krishna Bahadur Mahara today met in Singha Durbar and decided to intensify discussions on six contentious issues of the statute. NC and UML teams held discussion yesterday while UML and UCPN-M had met on Thursday.
Paudel said the discussions were aimed at forging consensus on contentious issues. Paudel also discussed contemporary political issues with UCPN-M Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal at the latter’s residence in Lazimpat.
“As we are at the preliminary level of discussions, we have set six agendas — state restructuring and federalism, forms of governance, election system, judiciary, preamble of the new statute and ensuring social security for underprivileged groups — for discussions,” UCPN-M leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha told THT.
The three parties have agreed to intensify discussions and attempt to bring groups outside the CA, mainly the Mohan Baidhya-led CPN-Maoist into the process of statute drafting and for taking a common stance on the fundamentals of democracy.
As the CA’s consensus committee works in a formal, the teams of major parties are working from outside the committee with the aim of facilitating the committee, Shrestha said.
NC, according to its Central Committee member Gagan Thapa, has intensified intra-party discussions.
“Some NC leaders, including Narahari Acharya, Ramesh Lekhak, me and the party’s office bearers have recently held two rounds of discussions on how to settle disputed issues and discussions will continue,” Thapa said.
The first CA was dissolved on 27 May 2012 due to differences among UCPN-M, NC and UML on some issues, mainly on how to address the issue of identity of different communities in the federal structure and whether to adopt directly elected presidential system or Parliament-elected Prime Minister as chief executive. Although they were closer on forms of governance, they were sharply divided on whether there should be single ethnicity-based federal structure or multiple-ethnicity based federal units.