Kathmandu, September 28

Nepal’s development partners have welcomed the new constitution which came into effect on September 20.

“Promulgation of the new constitution has closed the chapter of the peace process in the country,” Swiss Ambassador to Nepal Urs Harren told the local development partners meeting, on behalf of all the donor agencies operating in the country.

Two major objectives of the peace process that began in 2005 were managing the Maoist combatants and delivering a new constitution through the Constituent Assembly.

The first target was met in 2013 and the second was achieved with the promulgation of the new constitution on September 20.

Despite this achievement, Nepal has not been able to celebrate it heartily because some of the Madheshi parties and groups are not satisfied with some of the provisions in the new constitution.

“We fully recognise the problems faced during delivery of the constitution,” Harren told the meeting attended by ambassadors of different countries, and high-ranking officials of various multilateral lending agencies and international non-governmental organisations — albeit Indian representative was not present.

“But dialogue should be continued so that broad aspirations of people are met. Also, all the groups should be brought on-board while implementing the new constitution.”

Harren said development partners were also willing to extend necessary support to roll out local elections, although holding the polls was a challenging task.

He also strongly raised the issue of finalising appropriate legislation to revive the National Authority for Reconstruction (NAR) so that urgent needs faced by victims of earthquakes of April and May could be addressed.

The government had introduced Ordinance on Reconstruction of Structures Damaged by the Earthquake ahead of the June 25 International Conference on Nepal’s Reconstruction to show the country’s development partners that the government was serious about rebuilding parts of the country ravaged by earthquakes.

Based on this Ordinance, the government on August 13 appointed Govind Raj Pokhrel as the CEO of the NAR.

Then during NAR’s first meeting, held in presence of Prime Minister and NAR Chairperson Sushil Koirala on August 25, 31 districts to execute rehabilitation and reconstruction works were identified.

However, NAR has remained defunct since then, as the Parliament failed to approve the Replacement Bill, derived from the Ordinance, within 60 days of commencement of the parliament session.

“The Bill is in Parliament and sometimes parliamentary proceedings take time to conclude. But we will come up with it soon,” Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said.