• 165 lawmakers, including 23 from UML, vote in his favour • 83 UML MPs vote against him
KATHMANDU, JULY 18
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba won the vote of confidence today, with 165 of the 249 lawmakers present in the 275-member House of Representatives voting in his favour, including 23 UML lawmakers.
Some UML taskforce members close to Nepal did not take part in the voting process.
All 32 members of the Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal also voted in favour of Deuba. The JSP-N has 34 lawmakers but two have been suspended.
Sixty-one NC lawmakers, 48 CPN-Maoist Centre lawmakers, and one Rastriya Janamorcha lawmaker also voted in favour of Deuba, according to parties' sources.
Eighty- three UML lawmakers voted against Deuba, said Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota.
Rastriya Prajatantra Party lawmaker Rajendra Lingden stayed neutral during the floor test.
The Mahantha Thakur-Rajendra Mahato faction of the JSP-N, which had supported former prime minister KP Sharma Oli when he staked claim to form a new government under Article 76 (5), today decided to support Deuba.
Earlier, speaking from the rostrum of the House UML Spokesperson Pradeep Kumar Gyawali said his party could not vote in favour of Deuba because 'he became the PM as a result of five Supreme Court justices' wrong interpretation of the constitution'.
He said the SC's ruling that whip would not apply in the course of the implementation of Article 76 (5) had undermined the checks and balances and separation of power, which were pillars of democracy. He said party-less system made back door entry into Nepal's political system due to the SC's ruling that allowed lawmakers to exercise their power under Article 76 (5) independently without being constrained by parties' whips.
CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal said Article 76 (5) gave lawmakers the power of their wisdom to save the HoR from premature dissolution.
He said the establishment faction of the UML was spreading rumour that the new PM was appointed by the SC. "Deuba had submitted signatures of 149 lawmakers and not appointing him the PM was wrong. The SC has just interpreted the constitution and ruled that not appointing Deuba the PM was wrong," Dahal said.
He said Oli did not accept decisions of majority in the erst-while Nepal Communist Party.
"How could a person who did not accept decisions of majority in his party can claim to be democratic?" he wondered. Oli had lost majority in all the important bodies of the NCP.
Nepali Congress lawmaker Minendra Rijal also defended the Supreme Court verdict, saying the SC had only upheld the constitutional supremacy when it directed the president to appoint Deuba the PM.
He said Oli was trying to derail the constitution and when the court checked his accesses, the establishment faction of the UML started criticising the court. He said Oli dissolved the HoR twice at a time when he should have been focusing on tackling the COVID pandemic.
Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal leader Mahantha Thakur said his party would vote in favour of Deuba but wanted the government to meet the party's demands.
He said false criminal charges filed against party leaders and cadres should be withdrawn, constitution should be amended, and the citizenship law should be enacted soon.
JSP-N leader Baburam Bhattarai said Oli grossly undermined the constitution by dissolving the HoR twice and making appointments to the constitutional bodies without parliamentary oversight.
He said Oli tried to rule the country through ordinances.
"Activities that took place between December 20 and May 22 were a blot on Nepal's democracy,"
Bhattarai said, referring to the first and the second dissolution of the HoR. He said the HoR, being the sovereign people's body should have used its authority to convene its meeting when it was abruptly dissolved as that was also the ruling of the SC in the HoR dissolution case.
Bhattarai urged Deuba to provide relief to people affected by the COVID pandemic, to amend the constitution to build national environment for ensuring identity-based federalism, provide citizenship to thousands of stateless citizens, and to free JSP-N cadres and leaders who were falsely indicted in the case, including lawmaker Resham Chaudhary.
PM Deuba responded to lawmakers' remarks, saying that his first priority would be to provide COVID-19 vaccines to all Nepalis. He said he was ready to make his government a national government if all parties joined his government.
Meanwhile, Indian PM Narendra Modi congratulated Deuba for winning the trust vote. He also tweeted his best wishes to the new PM.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 19 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
