+

I don’t feel negative about my ‘sacrifice’ for unification: Ishwar Pokharel

Ishwar Pokharel

Kathmandu, May 20

Nepal Communist Party’s Central Secretariat member Ishwar Pokharel says he does not have any negative feeling about the loss of his position as the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre merged into the CPN last week.

Whereas Bishnu Paudel, who was Deputy General Secretary in the UML while Pokharel was the General Secretary, has been made the General Secretary of the unified party, Pokharel has not been given any additional role except the membership of nine-member supreme committee. He, however, is two positions above Paudel in the official rank structure of the party.

In this context, commentators have argued that top two leaders of the NCP–KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal–try to groom Paudel as their ‘heir’. Some have even claimed that Pokharel lost his position as he could not please Oli.

But, Pokharel says he does not have any grudges against Oli or Paudel or the party leadership, adding he has taken it as a sacrifice he made for the larger good of the party.

“The party got unified, this is what matters. Where I am today does not matter,” Pokharel says in an interview with Onlinekhabar, “I was already elected the General Secretary of UML twice and our charter would not allow me to take up the same position again.”

“I had argued that each of us should give up something to make the unification a success. Therefore, I do not feel anything negative about giving up my position.”

Pokharel informs that Oli proposed Paudel’s name for General Secretary considering his organisational skills and other members of the Secretariat endorsed it unanimously.

“The chairperson [Oli] proposed the name thoughtfully and we have endorsed that.”

 

React to this post

Conversation

New Old Popular