KATHMANDU: Chairman of the ruling partner CPN-UML, KP Sharma Oli, today reiterated that the journey towards peace, national unity, democracy and prosperity alone were the party’s stance.

He further said the agreement reached by the parties yesterday night regarding the contentious issues of the new constitution would not create any hurdles in this journey.

In his first official remarks to the media at a programme held at the party office at Balkhu today after the historic agreement, the UML chairman said, “Participation in the government and or the government leadership are not important topics for the UML. Framing a democratic constitution and reconstruction in the country are priority issues for us.

This agreement has also expressed the UML’s patriotism and commitment to change, democracy and prosperity. For the UML, any of the proposed number of federal provinces is auspicious, none is inauspicious.”

There were comments after the signing of the 16-point agreement among the parties yesterday night proposing to create eight federal provinces that the UML had given up its stance on five or six provinces for government leadership.

Apparently in his answer to this comment, the UML chairman said, “We have agreed to the eight-province federal model, demonstrating our flexibility for ensuring the framing of the new constitution and taking into account the context of our perspective towards and the contents of the federation rather than the number of provinces.”

Oli said the agreement signed by the parties had given a fresh message in the context of protecting the achievements of the people’s struggles at various times and the agreements after the failure of the first Constituent Assembly in delivering the constitution and the second CA also bogged in a standoff.

He believed that the 16-point agreement had infused confidence that works related to drafting the constitution would now gain momentum as contentious issues of the constitution had been settled.

Oli stressed that reconstruction works would now move ahead successfully as the agreement had fostered the environment of consensus and collaboration among parties.

“The work of party volunteers has been successful. Even the government has not been able to do this much work,” Oli said in the context of the National Volunteers Mobilisation Campaign run by the party for post-quake relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction.

Meanwhile, a meeting of the National Volunteers Mobilisation Committee Secretariat today took a decision by which all the party members of 76 electoral constituencies in 25 districts would have to mandatorily contribute their labour in their respective constituencies from June 19 to 21.