KATHMANDU, AUGUST 1

Nepali Congress leader Minendra Rijal says that his party should trust other coalition partners, particularly the CPN-Maoist Centre, but should also verify it. He says if the ruling alliance enlarges the pie of electoral gains in the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections, the NC should get a reasonable share.

The Nepali Congress has unanimously decided to go for poll tie-up or seat sharing arrangements with the ruling coalition partners, but two of the partners - the CPN-Maoist Centre and the CPN (Unified Socialist) do not seem to be very happy about the kind of poll arrangements the NC has suggested.

There are many in the NC who think if CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal was not given a sweetheart deal for the arrangement, then he might switch sides and forge a left alliance with CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli, similar to the alliance that he had forged in the past. When THT asked Rijal how he looked at issue, he responded by saying, 'If you cannot trust Dahal for next four months, how can you trust him for the next five years. Such arguments are logical fallacies. What I mean to say is if you cannot trust someone for four months how can you trust him/her for five years. If I can trust him for four months, I have good reasons to believe that he is trustworthy for five years. But we have to resolve this.'

He added, 'I would not be judgmental on that. Let me borrow from a famous quip from Lenin and Stalin that former US President Ronald Regan so often repeated while negotiating the peace with the Soviet Union. 'Trust but verify.' I am willing to trust Dahal but will verify my trust.' He believes to do well in the upcoming polls, the ruling alliance leadership needs to manage ticket distribution well.

A version of this article appears in the print on August 2, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.