Kathmandu, December 13, 2006

The high-level meeting of the eight political parties, held today at the Prime Minister’s official residence in Baluwatar, agreed to finalise the draft of the interim constitution tomorrow afternoon.

Top leaders of the seven-party alliance and the CPN-Maoist, who are scheduled to meet at 1 pm, would sign the interim constitution on behalf of their respective parties and it would be approved by the council of ministers before being tabled at the House of Representatives for its promulgation.

However, the leaders who spoke to the media did not say when the interim constitution would be promulgated. Narayan Man Bijuckchhe of Nepal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party said that an appropriate date would be fixed to promulgate it.

The government and the Maoist talks teams had handed over the draft of the constitution to the PM on Monday. Emerging from the meeting, CPNUML general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal told the media that they decided to finalise the draft at tomorrow’s meeting of eight political parties.

Both the talks teams tabled the draft of the interim constitution before the meeting of the political parties.

“We agreed to postpone the meeting to tomorrow as some of the leaders of the eight parties said they had not seen the draft, hence we needed some time,” Nepal said.

Plan to appoint Sharma as NHRC chief draws flak

At a time when the Council of Ministers is going to formally discuss the name of former Chief Justice Mohan Prasad Sharma to head the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), lawyers today came down heavily against him.

Talking to THT today, the lawyers criticised the government’s plan to appoint him as the NHRC chairman.

They alleged that Sharma had played an important role in suppressing the 1990 Jana Aandolan and promoted corruption in the Judiciary while he was the Chief Justice.

Sharma had detained current state minister Dharmanath Prasad Shah and Attorney General Yagya Murti Banjade in 1990 when he was the chief judge of the then Pokhara Regional Court. “He had detained 17 lawyers as per the order of the royal regime then; how can he head the NHRC in the current situation?” asked former president of the Nepal Bar Association (NBA) Harihar Dahal.

According to him, Sharma had then locked up NBA’s Pokhara unit office when lawyers were demonstrating for the restoration of democracy. “How can a supporter of an autocratic regime protect people’s fundamental rights?” he added.

In 1997, the NBA had decided to boycott Sharma’s bench accusing him of not being able to prevent corruption in the Judiciary when he was the Chief Justice. The NBA had withdrawn its protest against him.