Dahal hints at roping in NSP-N, FSF-N

Kathmandu May 2

Following a series of meetings with Naya Shakti Party-Nepal Coordinator Baburam Bhattarai and Federal Socialist Forum-Nepal Chairman Upendra Yadav last week, CPN-Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal today said a ‘broader unity’ would take place after his party’s unification with the CPN-UML.

Briefing his party leaders during a meeting of the CPN-MC Secretariat at the party headquarters in Parisdanda, Dahal said the chances of smaller parties continuing to exist after the CPN-MC-UML unification were slim, hinting at a broader unity encompassing Bhattarai’s NSP-N and Yadav’s FSF-N.

“I’ll discuss issues related to the unified party’s central committee with Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli tomorrow. If everything is finalised, we’ll announce unification date on May 5, coinciding with German philosopher Karl Marx’s bicentennial birth anniversary,” CPN-MC Secretariat member Mani Thapa quoted Dahal as saying in the meeting.

Dahal said the size of the unified party’s central committee would be finalised in his meeting with Oli tomorrow. Dahal also floated the idea of expanding the CPN-MC Secretariat from around 77 to around 200 members and merging it with the UML’s central committee, taking the strength of the unified party’s central committee to around 400, said Thapa. Dahal told his party leaders that matters related to political document, organisational structure and statute of the unified party had almost been finalised, and that the CPN-MC’s people’s democracy in the 21st century and the UML’s people’s multiparty democracy would be reference documents for ‘socialism-oriented society’.

Dahal, however, did not say anything about the inclusion of the phrase ‘people’s war’ in the preamble of the statute of the unified party. Nor did he talk about the election symbol of the unified party.