KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 20

Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal told a meeting of CPN-Maoist Centre office bearers that the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML were keen to elicit his support to get their candidates elected as the new president, but he wants the new president to be chosen through consensus. CPN-MC office bearers entrusted him with the responsibility of taking the final call on whether or not to choose the president through consensus.

Senior Vice-chair of CPN- MC Krishna Bahadur Mahara said the PM would consult senior leaders before deciding on the matter. The CPN- UML, which claims that the CPN-MC had, on December 25, assured it the post of the president, wants its own candidate elected as the new president.

A CPN-MC leader said that Dahal informed the meeting that UML Chair KP Sharma Oli had told three former prime ministers -- Baburam Bhattarai, Jhalanath Khanal, and Madhav Kumar Nepal -- that he would support them for president if Dahal backed any of them.

'Both Dahal and Oli want to outsmart each other and it is not clear who will succeed before the presidential election,' the leader added.

Before the CPN-MC office bearers' meeting, Dahal had met CPN (Unified Socialist) Chair Madhav Kumar Nepal and discussed presidential election with him.

CPN-MC leader Lilamani Pokharel said they would prefer to choose the president through consensus even if that meant fissures in the ruling alliance. He said Dahal told party leaders that the NC had also asked him to support its candidate for president.

Meanwhile, CPN-MC leader Dev Prasad Gurung made it clear today that the party could not accept CPN- UML's candidate as the president.

Talking to mediapersons before the party's office bearers' meeting here today, Gurung said the spirit of the constitution was to elect such a person as the new president who could protect the republican order and constitution and maintain national unity.

When asked about his party's previous assurance to support the UML candidate for the president's post, Gurung wondered, 'How can a particular party be given the post of president? Is there such a provision in the constitution? How can one talk of something which is not in the constitution?'

Gurung said the UML merely put forth a proposal on December 25 that it wanted its candidate to be elected as the new president.

'It is not that a political party cannot put forth a proposal. But does the constitution support a president from a political party?' he wondered.

Gurung said that the president should be elected in accordance with the spirit of the constitution. When asked if his party's failure to back UML candidate for the president could break the seven-party alliance, Gurung said the ruling alliance was not formed to elect the president.

In response to a journalist's query, Gurung said since both the presidents were loyal to particular parties, they exercised power beyond the constitutional brief. He cited the Katuwal episode and repeated dissolution of the House of Representatives.

When Dahal was the prime minister in 2008, he had sacked the then chief of army staff, Rukumangud Katuwal, but the then president, Ram Baran Yadav, stayed the government's decision, following which Dahal had resigned as PM. He also cited Bhandari's swift endorsement of then PM KP Sharma Oli's decision to dissolve the HoR twice. Gurung said the president even rejected the government's recommendations when it didn't suit the UML. Apparently, he was referring to President Bhandari using pocket veto against the citizenship bill. She is also sitting on an ordinance that sought to allow withdrawal of cases against 'political prisoners'.

A version of this article appears in the print on February 21, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.