KATHMANDU, JUNE 25
Although the CPN-UML secretariat recently suspended the party statute's provision that barred people above 70 years from contesting party positions, Janata Samajwadi Party-Nepal Chair Upendra Yadav has brought the issue to the national discourse.
Yadav presented the party's statute draft to the party's General Convention here today, proposing to bar people above 70 years of age from holding party posts.
In the 80-page draft, Yadav also proposed to bar leaders from holding the same post within the elected party bodies for more than 10 years. It is not clear whether the JSP-N convention will endorse Yadav's proposal but if did, it would build pressure on other political parties to have similar provision.
JSP-N Spokesperson Manish Kumar Suman told THT that many General Convention representatives shared views with party Chair Yadav on age bar for party posts and that provision would probably be passed by the GC without any modification. "We want to do things properly, which means if our General Convention passes the statute, everybody will adhere to those provisions and any change should be effected only through the proper mechanism, not on any leader's whim," Suman said.
He said age bar and two term-bar provisions would help his party attract the young generation who complain they are not getting chance to serve in executive positions.
Nepali Congress General Secretary Gagan Kumar Thapa is ahead of other leaders of major parties in advocating handover of party leadership to the younger generation. Some young leaders of the CPN-UML also want age bar provision, but they lack courage to raise the issue within the party. No CPN-MC leader has come forward with the proposal to bar leaders on age ground or on the ground that a particular leader has held a party position for more than 10 years. CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has been leading the party for more than two decades.
Meanwhile addressing the inaugural session of the party's General Convention, JSP-N Chair Upendra Yadav said that the constitution needed to be amended to ensure identity-based federalism, fully proportional representation system and directly elected presidential system. Yadav said he favoured amendment to the constitution but if that did not happen, the constitution may not last long.
He said the current election system was very expensive and it must be dropped or else it would increase corruption.
There are 71 countries in the world where parties and their candidates do not spend a penny during election, he argued.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 26, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
