• PARLIAMENTARY, PROVINCIAL POLLS
KATHMANDU, JUNE 19
CPN (Unified Socialist) Chair Madhav Kumar Nepal today said the current coalition would remain intact till the upcoming provincial and parliamentary elections and the alliance partners would try to keep the alliance intact even after the polls.
Speaking at a press conference with editors here, Nepal said parties needed to be accustomed to coalition culture as the chances of a single party winning comfortable majority in the parliamentary elections were slim. He said that's what happens when parliamentary seats are decided by the first-past-the-post election system and the proportional representation system.
He said his party could not win more seats in the local polls because coalition partners did not cooperate in seat sharing, but that did not mean that his party would abandon the alliance.
Nepal said alliance partners needed to start discussion early for the parliamentary and provincial seat sharing arrangement. Unlike local polls, where accommodating too many candidates from all parties is a challenge, seat sharing will be easier in parliamentary and provincial polls, he added.
Nepal said the current coalition was formed to save the constitution, democracy, and federalism and to stop regression. He called the UMLled coalition a coalition of rightist forces. In response to a query, Nepal said his party did not want to have negative views about the UML forever, but KP Sharma Oli, who dissolved the House of Representatives twice, had remained unrepentant.
On United States State Partnership Programme, Nepal said coalition partners had not discussed in detail whether Nepal should withdraw from SPP.
People should be made aware of the risk of Nepal being a playground for power play, he added. "Patriotic feelings will help us check those who want to help foreign powers for their selfish interests," Nepal said and added that sensitised public would prevent the government from signing any deal with anybody that could go against Nepal's neighbours' sensitivities.
He said Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba had assured ruling coalition partners that he would not sign any document with foreign countries that could go against national interests.
"We do not need to doubt the PM's intention," he added.
Nepal said efforts to share seats failed during local polls but his party's performance was not bad, as it could win the mayoral race of Pokhara Metropolitan City and Hetauda Sub-metropolitan City.
He claimed that his party lost some seats in local elections as a large number of votes meant for his party became invalid. He said the Election Commission needed to come up with such ballot papers that prevented confusion among voters.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 20, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
