Kathmandu, July 19
After nearly one month of a heated dispute, two chairmen of the ruling Nepal Communist Party have come to a meeting point with KP Sharma Oli convincing Pushpa Kamal Dahal to hold the party’s next convention to elect its new leadership by December this year.
With this agreement, Dahal, in effect, has dropped his demand that Oli resign both as the prime minister and the party chairman. It means he will not challenge Oli’s leadership until the end of this year.
During the party’s crucial secretariat meeting on Saturday, Oli had proposed an early convention, which Dahal agreed.
However, the party’s senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal and leaders close to him, who had supported Dahal in demanding Oli’s resignation, are not happy with the deal, suspecting the two chairmen’s ‘consensus’ could overshadow their voices in the party. This camp further suspects the party will be unable to hold the convention by December as proposed owing to the Covid-19 crisis and short time available for preparations, which could linger the existing leadership problem in the party formed after the merger between the then CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre in 2018.
In the new equation in the party’s nine-member secretariat, Oli, Dahal, Ishwar Pokharel, Ram Bahadur Thapa, and Bishnu Paudel are on one side whereas Nepal, Jhala Nath Khanal, Bamdev Gautam, and Narayan Kaji Shrestha on the other.
Following the meeting, both Oli and Dahal also met President Bidya Devi Bhandari, probably to inform her of the agreement. Many social media users have criticised the head of the state’s involvement in the party’s internal politics.
