‘UML ready for consensus govt’

Kathmandu, June 3

General Secretary of CPN-UML Ishwor Pokhrel on Friday said his party won’t be an obstacle to change the government if the parties could forge national consensus.

“Whether it is in the UML’s leadership or the Maoist, we are ready for that if there is consensus among the major parties,” Pokhrel told reporters at the party headquarters in Dhumbarahi.

However, general secretary Pokhrel, who is close to Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, said he was not aware of any gentleman’s agreement with the coalition partner CPN-Maoist Centre.

Former prime minister and former party chairman Jhalanath Khanal, who has been claiming that UML had averted an impending crisis through a gentleman’s agreement, reluctantly agreed that there had been certain agreement to avert the crisis.

He said national consensus was essential to implement the new constitution.

Meanwhile, after almost two years of completion of its national convention, CPN-UML on Friday finalised its 31 departments. UML had formed a three-member task force to give full shape to the departments in the leadership of General Secretary Pokhrel in April last year.

Due to conflict between the two rival factions within the party one led by Chairman Oli and the other led by former general secretary of the party Madhav Nepal  the party had failed to finalise the departments.

As per the new setting, PM Oli is the chief of party’s schooling department, while senior leader Nepal leads the foreign affairs department and former chairman Jhalanath Khanal, who also wanted to head the foreign affairs department, has not been allocated any department.