KATHMANDU, JANUARY 3

The first meeting of the central committee of the CPN-Maoist Centre today unanimously elected Pushpa Kamal Dahal as the party's new chair for the next five years. Although CPN-MC leaders had said earlier that the first meeting of the central committee would elect 15 office bearers, including party chair, the CC elected only the party chair but not the other 14 office bearers.

Dahal told mediapersons that they decided to elect other office bearers only after two other senior leaders - Barshaman Pun and Onsari Gharti Magar who are in China - return to Nepal.

Both are expected to return tomorrow.

Dahal said the CC meeting was postponed till January 9. He told mediapersons that he would remain active in party politics as long as party cadres and leaders, as well as people of the country expected him to play active role in politics.

Earlier, addressing the CC meeting, Dahal said this tenure would probably be his last one due to his age and other factors. He said his reelection offered both challenges and opportunities.

Surprisingly, he was candid in admitting that he felt burdened with the new responsibility of serving the country.

'It is not that I did not think of starting a different role when politics became more challenging, but my desire to bring stability and progress did not allow me to remain politically inactive,' he said. He added that Maoists were a revolutionary force that championed a revolutionary ideology and his absence from active politics could not end the revolutionary ideology.

A CPN-MC leader told THT that party leaders decided to postpone today's meeting because they sought more time to pick office bearers in a way that could maintain power balance within the party.

A version of this article appears in the print on January 4, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.