• MCC RATIFICATION
KATHMANDU, FEBRUARY 12
As the government nears the February 28 deadline for securing parliamentary ratification of the Millennium Challenge Corporation deal, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba continues his bid to convince the two ruling coalition partners - CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal and CPN (Unified Socialist) Chair Madhav Kumar Nepal to support MCC ratification, but his efforts have not yielded any positive results yet.
Today, Deuba discussed the MCC deal with Dahal and Nepal again and urged them to agree to table the MCC deal in the House of Representatives, but the two left leaders refused to back the PM.
According to Dahal's personal aide Ramesh Malla, the PM told Dahal and Nepal that he favoured tabling the MCC deal immediately so that it could be put to vote soon, but Dahal and Nepal did not agree with the PM.
PM Deuba even told Dahal and Nepal that it was natural for coalition partners to hold divergent views on certain issues, but that should not prevent them from tabling the bill. PM Deuba said the differences on the deal would not cause the coalition to break, according to Malla.
Nepal and Dahal told Deuba that as the MCC deal had become a national issue, it should not be tabled in the HoR without trying to forge consensus.
Dahal and Nepal urged the PM to reschedule the House of Representatives meeting for February 16 as per the request of the main opposition CPN-UML. The Parliament Secretariat has scheduled the next meeting of the HoR for February 14.
UML Chief Whip Bishal Bhattarai said his party had asked Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota to defer the February 14 meeting because on that day his party had planned the UML's province- level political programme. He said his party had not made this request to evade tabling of the MCC deal in the House of Representatives. "Rather we want the government to table the MCC deal without further delay. The government commands majority and it can pass the MCC deal without our support," he added.
The PM felt the heat after US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu called PM Deuba, UML Chair KP Sharma Oli, and CPN-MC Chair Dahal, warning them that Nepal could lose $500 million MCC project if it failed to ratify the MCC deal by February 28. Dahal and PM Deuba had written to MCC on September 29 assuring the American side that they would make efforts to pass the MCC deal in four to five months.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 13, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
