KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 21
Madhes based political parties have intensified lobbying for electing Mahantha Thakur as the new president.
Loktantrik Samajbadi Party-Nepal leader Sarvendra Nath Shukla told THT that they met the Prime Minister and Chair of CPN-Maoist Centre Pushpa Kamal Dahal and asked him to pick LSP-N Chair Mahantha Thakur as the national consensus candidate for the post of president.
The PM and his party has been saying that there is a need to choose the president through national consensus so that such a president can rise above partisan politics and play his/her role neutrally in accordance with the constitution that says the president shall abide by and protect the constitution and maintain national unity.
Shukla said the Upendra Yadav-led Janata Samajbadi Party-Nepal, the Ranjita Shrestha-led Nagarik Unmukti Party, and the CK Raut-led Janamat Party had verbally assured the LSP-N of their support to get Thakur elected the president.
Shukla said his party leaders would soon meet CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, seeking their help to elect Thakur as the new president. As per the constitution, the president and the vice-president should represent different communities.
JSP-N Spokesperson Manish Kumar Suman said Madhesis were being ignored in the power sharing deal and they would raise that with other parties.
"Madhesis did not get any of the four keys posts - speaker or deputy speaker of the House of Representatives or chairperson or deputy chairperson of the National Assembly. Now, when the time has come to elect the new president and the vice-president, none of the major parties have floated names of Madhesi leaders for the top posts," Suman added.
Political analyst Chandra Kishore said the Madhesi community could get only one post - the president or the vice-president. But, since the JSP-N wanted the post of the vice-president, it was not clear how the four Madhes-based parties - JSP-N, LSP-N, Janamat Party, and NUP - who have not officially declared their common candidate for the president, could increase their bargaining power.
If a Madhesi is elected as the president, that will help emotionally unify the country because the state's failure to implement agreements reached with Madhesi forces in the past has created a sense of alienation among Madhesis, he argued.
A Madhesi leader said that since the major parties were less likely to support a Madhesi candidate for the president, Madhes-based parties should try to secure the post of the vice-president. A Madhesi civil society member, who is committed to republican federal system and has the knowledge of constitutional law, can be a suitable candidate for the post of vice-president, he argued.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 22, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
