Unified party may have 301 CC members

  • PUCC likely to get party’s political document on Thursday

Kathmandu March 25

The task force led by Minister of Home Affairs and senior CPN-Maoist Centre leader Ram Bahadur Thapa has proposed to keep chairperson and secretaries in seven provinces and 77 district chapters of the unified party as office bearers. The task force has also proposed to keep coordinator and secretary in the coordination committees across the country and chiefs and secretaries in the party’s departments.

“We have not finalised a model of office bearers at the central level yet,” UML leader Bedu Ram Bhusal, who is also a member of the task force, told THT after the meeting today.

Left alliance leaders had earlier said CPN-UML Chair KP Sharma Oli and CPN-MC Chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal would co-chair the unified party.

According to Bhusal, the task force has almost finalised drafts of the party’s statute and modalities of the party’s sister organisations’ unification. UML has 22 sister organisations and CPN-MC 24.

“We need to discuss some of the issues relating to the statute,” Bhusal said. According to him, the task force has not proposed the strength of the central committee. Sources said there could be 299 or 301 members in the unified party’s CC.

Oli and Dahal had earlier agreed that the members of the CC should not exceed 99.

Meanwhile, the task force formed under CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal to prepare the common political document has agreed to list the agreed upon and pending issues. The document will be finalised on Wednesday and will be submitted to Party Unification Coordination Committee meeting on Thursday.

“We are discussing the draft of the common political document. The issues will be endorsed by the PUCC meeting,” a member of political document formulation task force Dev Gurung told THT after the meeting today.

According to him, the debated issues will be discussed in the inner circles of the party until the general convention of the unified party. “No final agreement has been reached on any issue” he said. According to sources, the task force has analysed left forces’ political power, national and international communist movement, and rationale and necessity for party unity.

The alliance has already agreed that the guiding principle of the unified party will be Marxism and Leninism. The alliance has also agreed to debate Maoism, people’s democracy in the 21st century and People’s Multi-party Democracy in the general convention.

They have agreed to recognise the achievement of the federal democratic republic of Nepal as a result of Jhapa revolution, people’s movement of 1990, Maoist people’s war and popular movement of 2006.

Name of the party will be Nepal Communist Party as agreed on February 19.