KATHMANDU, JUNE 12
CPN-UML General Secretary Shankar Pokharel defended the party's decision to suspend the party statute age bar provision for party leadership. Earlier, the party had made provisions whereby any party leader aspiring to be in the executive body should be less than 70 years of age.
Addressing a programme here today, Pokharel said that his party suspended the age bar provision for the time being as Mukunda Neupane was nominated to the Central Committee of the party. Neupane who had joined the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led CPN (Unified Socialist) left the party recently and joined the CPN-UML.
A few days ago, when the UML Secretariat decided to suspend the age bar provision Bamdev Gautam also met UML Chair KP Sharma Oli. Gautam who had left the UML after the split in the erstwhile Nepal Communist Party (NCP) had said on multiple occasions that he was ready to return to the mother party provided the party dropped the age bar rule.
Pokharel said that it would be wrong to argue that the party would lose dynamism just because it suspended the age bar provision.
He said Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal had been the chair of his party for the last 35 years but in the same period five leaders had led his party. "We are ahead of other parties in terms of changing leadership," Pokharel said.
Section 64 of the UML statute stipulates that anybody who wants to be on the executive panel of the party structure should not have reached the age of 70 years and if somebody who has been elected to any post before attaining the age of 70, but if he/she reaches the age bar after the election, then he/she shall remain in the post until the next general convention of the party.
Political analyst Hari Roka said that although UML leaders have publicly cited the induction of Mukunda Neupane into the UML for the suspension of age bar rule, the real reason for the same was Oli's desire to remain in the party's leadership and to become the prime minister again. He said there was democracy deficiency in political parties.
"Democratic norms require a party's leadership to own up political responsibility for the party's defeat in election, but in Nepal this rarely happens," he added.
Roka said a political leader who has not enthused the country in the past and does not have new vision to lead the country, should not try to become party chair repeatedly.
A version of this article appears in the print on June 13, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
