KATHMANDU, JANUARY 31
CPN-Maoist Centre Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal and CPN (Unified Socialist) Chair Madhav Kumar Nepal today met Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and discussed Millennium Challenge Corporation agreement and local elections with him.
According to a CPN-MC source, Dahal and Nepal told the PM that the MCC agreement could not be passed without making amendments to the agreement.
Left parties have been saying that the MCC agreement is aimed against China and some provisions of the MCC deal undermine sovereignty.
Deuba has been saying that the MCC deal is purely a grant assistance and it can spur development if ratified by the Parliament.
"The prime minister wants to table the MCC deal in the Parliament irrespective of the possible outcome. But Dahal and Nepal have told the PM that there was need to forge consensus between political parties on the deal," a CPN- MC source said.
Another CPN-MC source said the PM was told that the deal could not be passed in the current form and if he wanted to pass it, he was free to forge an alliance with the CPN-UML.
KP Sharma Oli-led government had registered the MCC deal in the Parliament, hoping to get it ratified. But since the fall of the Oli government, the UML has not made its stance clear vis-àvis the MCC deal except giving a vague reply that the ruling coalition has the majority to pass it and that the UML has not been consulted.
CPN (Unified Socialist) Spokesperson Jagannath Khatiwada said since the government had not presented all the documents related to the MCC deal to political parties, the MCC deal could not move ahead without the ruling coalition parties thoroughly studying it. "If the PM tries to table the MCC deal in the Parliament, it will only be done with the intention of seeing it fail," he added.
The US government wants the $500 million MCC project ratified by the Parliament as soon as possible, but it has not served any ultimatum for the same.
A version of this article appears in the print on February 1, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
