Prime Minister (PM) Pushpa Kamal Dahal has said that the coalition partners will decide on the presidential candidate by consensus.
Prime Minister Dahal said so after a meeting with CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli at the latter’s residence in Balkot on Friday afternoon. He has also stressed that the ruling coalition has not broken up.
“We are together. Being together does not show that it is broken,” he said of the status of the ruling coalition. “We will conclude on the president through consensus. It will be concluded in a couple of days.”
The two top coalition leaders also spoke for more than two hours on Thursday amid reports of the CPN (Maoist Centre) likely support for the Nepali Congress (NC) candidate in the presidential election.
Oli reminded Dahal of their Christmas Day deal during the one-on-one meeting at the latter’s residence in Baluwatar on Thursday.
Dahal resigned from the coalition with NC and Unified Socialist on December 25, 2022 and became Prime Minister (PM) with the support of CPN-UML, Rastriya Swatantra Party, RPP, Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP), Janamat Party and Nagarik Unmukti Party after the Nepal Congress. (NC) Sher Bahadur Deuba refused to name him prime minister.
UML has been saying the party should get the post of president as per the power-sharing deal reached with Dahal at the time of forming the government, while Prime Minister Dahal has been talking about the national consensus for president ever since NC voted for his government during the session. proof.
Oli reiterated the party’s demand for the post of president as per the previous agreement during the meeting with Dahal on Thursday. “The agreement of December 25 was to give the UML a president and announcer. Dahal himself came to our president’s residence in Balkot and agreed. The president has been repeatedly reminding Dahal about that,” a UML leader close to Oli told Setopati. “Dahal even proposed taking turns as the speaker when there was talk of dividing the PM mandate evenly. Our president also agreed with that.”
Another UML leader told Setopati that suspicions are growing that Dahal is trying to backtrack on the Christmas Day deal. “He hasn’t said that the UML candidate wouldn’t do it yet. But there are reasons to suspect. What the national consensus wants is unclear. We will not accept if he is seeking a national consensus for a non-UML candidate.”
A CPN (Maoist Center) leader told Setopati that Dahal repeated his desire for national consensus for president even on Thursday. “UML’s president has not rejected the national consensus, but he seems curious about how to seek that national consensus.”
Dahal has been flirting with Deuba since the plenum test and Maoist sources claim that the party will make the decision to support the NC candidate during the presidential elections.
Some Maoist leaders feel that UML candidates like Subash Chandra Nembang and Ashta Laxmi Shakya can be accepted for president. But most Maoist Center leaders spoke out against voting for the UML candidate in the presidential election during the party’s standing committee meeting in late January.
Multiple sources claim that top North Carolina and Maoist leaders have already agreed on the presidential election and there is unanimity in North Carolina to reach a formal agreement with the Maoist Center for the presidential election.
