'Not allowed but it's necessary to get government to meet demands'
KATHMANDU, AUGUST 19
Vice-chair of CPN-UML Subas Chandra Nembang says parliamentary regulations do not allow any party to obstruct House of proceedings, but despite this, parties obstruct parliamentary proceedings from time to time.
Nembang told THT that even though in other parliamentary democracies where House regulations do not allow any party or member of the House to obstruct the proceedings, they do obstruct the House sometimes to get their demands met.
Nembang, however, said that the party or member that obstruct House proceedings have the onus of justifying their actions. "UML has no option but to obstruct the House proceedings," he added, "One will have to wait to see whether or not the UML is able to provide justification for the House obstruction."
He argued that if the ruling parties wanted to avoid house obstruction, they should be ready to work with the spirit of collaboration. "Things have changed in recent years.
In the past, the ruling party wouldn't change even a comma or full stop in any document, but now we see that the government accepts opposition parties' demands," Nembang said and added that the ruling parties' readiness to give the chair of three parliamentary committees was a reflection of the government's willingness to work in collaboration with opposition parties in the House.
Nembang said that Rastriya Prajatantra Party and Rastriya Swatantra Party had accused the UML of dividing the spoils of opportunity, but it was up to the ruling parties to accommodate the RPP and RSP as chiefs of parliamentary panels.
When asked how he justified his party's recent obstruction of both Houses of the Parliament, Nembang said the CIB was not able to withstand pressure from the higher ups, and only a high-level probe committee could independently probe the recent gold smuggling racket. The UML leader said the fact that 100 kg gold had already been smuggled through the TIA reflected the failure of the home ministry and finance ministry and these ministries should take responsibility for the same.
"Chief of Department of Inland Revenue said he was tipped 10 days before the 100 kg gold was smuggled through Tribhuvan International Airport and the IRD chief also said that he had alerted the prime minister about it. How come the information that the PM had was not shared with the home ministry and the finance ministry?" he wondered.
Nembang said that his party had not demanded anybody's resignation over the gold smuggling racket, but given the seriousness of the matter, possibility of collusion of large number of people, the resignation of ministers alone would not be enough.
Nembang said that his party wanted a high-level probe committee to investigate the gold smuggling racket because CIB did not have the guts to probe CPN-Maoist Centre leader Krishna Bahadur Mahara and his son who had established contacts with a Chinese national accused of smuggling gold through the TIA by concealing the gold inside vapes.
He also said that despite the Supreme Court's order that even previous prime ministers whose roles were suspected in the Lalita Niwas land grab case should be quizzed, the CIB, which had been probing the matter, had not quizzed former prime ministers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Baburam Bhattarai.
The ruling parties have,however, refused to form a high level probe committee to investigate the gold smuggling case, saying such a move would reflect that the government did not have confidence in its own investigative agencies.
A version of this article appears in the print on August 20, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
