Kathmandu, December 9

A meeting of the central secretariat of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) today amended the party statute including a provision whereby the party would pursue the goal of communism.

The amendment will come into force after endorsement by the party’s standing and central committees.

According to the amendment proposal read out by NCP Spokesperson Narayan Kaji Shrestha after the secretariat meeting, the party’s strategic goal and fundamental programme is scientific socialism. “The party’s immediate programme is socialism-oriented people’s democracy. The party will create a base for socialism and establish socialism by implementing socialism-oriented people’s democracy on an immediate basis. But ultimately, the party will head towards the direction of communism,” added Shrestha.

The provision of ‘pursuing communism’ is new as the existing statute does not have such a provision, at least two senior NCP leaders confirmed. One of the two leaders was actively involved in drafting the existing statute.

The Himalayan Times could not independently verify whether the existing statute had such a provision as the party has not uploaded its statute on its website and a printed version was not available immediately.

One of the two leaders said the document was not uploaded on the website and was made available only in the printed version because of differences among party leaders over the statute dropping the provision of ‘communism’, among other things. The second leader, who was involved in statute drafting, said the provision was omitted from the existing statute due to a ‘technical glitch while printing’.

The party had drawn criticism, both from within and outside, that it had ‘relegated’ itself to becoming a ‘democratic socialist’ party by dropping the idea of communism. Following the criticism, the party had even formed a taskforce to make recommendations on the matter. The taskforce had recommended that the provision be included.

Political analysts say the amendment is meant to appease the traditional communist constituency who believe communism should be the ultimate goal of a communist party.

According to political analyst Jhalak Subedi, there are many dedicated communist voters and party workers who believe in communism and who might lean towards other communist parties just because their stated goal is communism. “So the political goal of the latest amendment is to minimise influence of other communist parties and establish the NCP as the mainstream communist party,” Subedi told THT. “There’s nothing more to it because the NCP is a party that has been practising capitalism.”

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