House meeting postponed

Kathmandu, December 24

With the ruling and opposition parties continuing to play hard ball over the constitution amendment bill, Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar postponed tomorrow’s meeting of the Parliament and rescheduled it for 1:00pm on Tuesday.

She rescheduled the House meeting by issuing a notice today. Earlier, the Speaker had called a meeting of the House for 1:00pm tomorrow.

The CPN-UML and some other fringe parties have been obstructing House proceedings since the government registered the bill on November 29.

The Speaker’s Press Adviser Babin Sharma told THT that the Speaker had postponed tomorrow’s meeting to encourage political parties to hold dialogue in the next two days to end the stalemate in the House.

“The Speaker gave more time to the parties to prevent repeated House obstruction. She also decided to make a second attempt to encourage parties to find a solution to the current stalemate,” Sharma added. The Speaker has also called a meeting of political parties on Monday.

Sharma said the Speaker invited the chiefs of top seven parties with representation in the Parliament and their chief whips in a bid to end the deadlock in the House. This is the second time the Speaker has called a meeting of parties to end the deadlock.

Deputy Parliamentary leader of the CPN-UML Subas Chandra Nembang said the government was not talking to the UML. “The prime minister seems busy inaugurating programmes in the districts. Any solution will come only after the parties hold dialogue,” Nembang added.

He said his party would stick to its policy of stalling House proceedings till the government withdrew the constitution amendment bill.

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Bimalendra Nidhi told THT that the government would not withdraw the bill as demanded by the UML. He said the ruling parties had been telling the CPN-UML not to obstruct parliamentary proceedings and would continue to do so. “We certainly want the UML to vote in favour of the bill, but if they think the bill lacks rationale, they should allow voting on the bill and defeat it,” Nidhi added, “If the UML thinks the bill will be defeated in the House, why is it scared of voting on the bill?”

He said the government’s proposal on revision of boundaries (to create another Tarai province from Nawalparasi Bardaghat Susta west to Bardiya) was not against what the UML had agreed, along with other political parties including the Nepali Congress, in the past.

Nidhi said it would take some time to end the deadlock in the Parliament.

“We held elections to the Constituent Assembly twice and I hope political forces will be able to build an environment, albeit gradually, to forge consensus on the bill,” he said, adding that the government might hold elections to all three bodies — local, Parliamentary and provincial.

Nidhi said the ruling parties’ leaders, including NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba and Ramchandra Paudel were touring different places of the country, particularly the hill districts of Province 5 to counter the rumour spread by the UML regarding revision of boundaries.

“The UML says that people of Province-5 are agitating against the bill. I would like to tell them that people of Nawalparasi, Rupandehi, Kapilvastu, Banke, Dang, and Bardiya are also people of Province 5 and they have not opposed the government’s proposal to change the boundaries,” Nidhi argued.

Meanwhile, chief whips of political parties including Nepali Congress, CPN-UML, CPN-Maoist Centre and some other parties today met Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar and insisted that she take the initiative for talks among the top leaders of major political parties.

“We met and told the Speaker to continue attempts to forge consensus. The Speaker, then, called a meeting of the seven parties for Monday,” said Nepali Congress Chief Whip Chin Kaji Shrestha. He blamed Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal for being engaged in making public speeches outside Kathmandu Valley instead of holding dialogue and making attempts to forge consensus.