Don't make a move in haste: UML dissidents

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Dissident ethnic leaders of the CPN-UML have urged other indigenous leaders not to launch a new political party in haste, saying that such a move would ultimately harm the indigenous movement.

“We have asked them not to launch a new political party in haste as it will not augur well for the janajati movement,” Prithvi Subba Gurung, a UML politburo member, said.

A group of indigenous leaders, led by Chaitanya Subba, however, are all set to announce a new party — Social Democratic Plurinational Party — tomorrow, to mark the World Indigenous Nationalities Day.

Subba Gurung, former CA member from UML and former minister, is one of the six prominent dissident leaders who have made public their differences with the party leadership over issues of state restructuring and federalism.

Subba Gurung said a new political party should be launched only after the ‘intra-party struggle’ failed to settle their concerns and added that they would not support the move to open a new party as they had not outlined reasons for the launch. “We are still in the process of dialogue with our leadership which has called upon us to sit for talks to address our grievances,” said Subba Gurung.

UML standing committee has assigned party’s Secretariat Secretary Bishnu Poudel to establish communication with the dissident leaders.

Along with Subba Gurung, UML Vice-chairman Ashok Rai, politburo members Ramchandra Jha and Bijaya Subba and central committee members Kiran Gurung and Rajendra Shrestha have already been relieved of party responsibilities for failing to show up at politburo and central committee meetings. Subba Gurung, who admitted to have absented himself from party meetings, however, expressed displeasure over party decision to relieve them of responsibilities and termed it leadership’s ‘shortsightedness’.

UML’s dissident leaders have been calling for carving out federal units on single identity basis, a demand the party leadership and the CC have turned down. The party leadership has been saying that the state needs to be restructured on multiple identity basis to satisfy all the communities in the given units.