Kathmandu, May 1

CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal today said the announcement of unification of his party with the CPN-UML was likely to be made on May 5, coinciding with German philosopher Karl Marx’s bicentennial birth anniversary.

“We are making preparations and an announcement is likely to be made on Marx’s 200th birth anniversary. Rest assured, the announcement will be made in a day or two,” said Dahal at an event organised by eight trade unions aligned to the CPN-MC and the UML in Kathmandu on the occasion of the 129th International Labour Day.

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Dahal have been holding one-on-one meetings, besides regular meetings of unification task forces, for the past several months, without any significant progress. The two parties have so far failed to strike an agreement on issues of power-sharing and ratio of representation in the unified party’s central committee.

Although the two parties have agreed on issues such as the unified party’s name and its guiding principle, they are yet to sort out the aforesaid issues. They have agreed to name the new party Nepal Communist Party with Marxism and Leninism as its guiding principles. Dahal said no one could stop unification. “We cannot afford to lose this opportunity, so we should not even imagine backtracking,” he said.

Dahal said Nepali communists were giving a new message to the world communist movement. “We are moving towards a new era of socialism,” he said, adding that the two-thirds majority of the left alliance in the Parliament was a result of long struggle.

“This is an opportunity to attain prosperity to ensure all the citizens are happy. We fought a long battle for political rights and we now are fighting to bring prosperity.” He also assured the people of development and prosperity. Dahal has called his party’s secretariat meeting tomorrow to discuss the organisational structure of the party.