Kathmandu, September 28
In yet another example of abuse of the constitutional provision on ordinances, the government on Monday scrapped an ordinance to amend the Act on Political Parties that would allow the parties to split more easily.
The cabinet meeting held on Monday evening recommended the discontinuity of the ordinance, which President Bidya Devi Bhandari immediately endorsed.
The Sher Bahadur Deuba government was forced to scrap the law that it had introduced last month after a ruling coalition partner, Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal, demanded so as a precondition to send its ministers to the government. Even two and a half months after the formation of the government, Deuba has been unable to give a full shape to the cabinet owing to the JSPN’s stance that also contradicted the wish of Madhav Kumar Nepal-led CPN-Unified Socialist, another coalition partner.
The CPN-Unified Socialist was born as a splinter group of the CPN-UML just last month taking advantage of the same controversial ordinance. The UML has filed a writ petition against the party at the Supreme Court, leaving the new party in a fix. Hence, the party had wanted the ordinance to continue but agreed to scrap it of late as the court denied the UML an interim order as the petitioner had sought.
Meanwhile, the government was unable to endorse the ordinance in the House of Representatives owing to the continued protest of the UML.
