Nepal’s main party leaders agreed on Friday to extend parliament’s term, in a dramatic eleventh-hour deal to avert political crisis in the troubled nation.
The Maoist party said the leaders had agreed to form a new national consensus government as part of the deal and reports said the prime minister had agreed to resign “soon,” although this could not immediately be confirmed.
The parliament, or Constituent Assembly, was elected two years ago to write a new constitution for the young republic, paving the way for fresh polls and turning the page on a decade of civil war between Maoist rebels and the state.
PHOTO: REUTERS
But it failed to do so by the Friday deadline, amid fierce wrangling between the Maoists and the ruling Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and Nepali Congress parties.
“We were able to reach a political agreement at the last minute,” Maoist party spokesman Dinanath Sharma said.
“We have agreed to extend the CA term by one year,” he said. “We have also committed to consensus and cooperation to take the peace process to a logical conclusion and finish the tasks that remain. We also agreed to form a new national consensus government.”
The opposition Maoists, who hold the highest number of seats in parliament and have pushed for a new power-sharing government, had said they would not vote for an extension unless Madhav Kumar Nepal stood down as prime minister.
A failure to extend the parliament would have left Nepal without a functioning legislature, plunging the country into political chaos and raising a question mark over the legitimacy of the coalition government.
The Maoist party won elections in 2008 and took power for nine months, abolishing Nepal’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy and turning the country into a secular republic.
But party leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda, resigned as prime minister a year ago in a disagreement with the head of the army over the integration of former Maoist fighters into the national army.
Prachanda has sat in opposition for the past year but has pushed the leaders of the UML and Nepali Congress to accept his demands for a new power-sharing government.
Lawmakers gathered in parliament shortly before midnight and passed the bill.
The exact terms of the agreement have not been confirmed, although the Web site of the Republica daily said the party leaders had agreed to “move ahead on the basis of consensus” and the prime minister would resign “as soon as possible.”
Earlier on Friday, thousands of people gathered outside the parliament building in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu to call for the resignation of the prime minister and the extension of parliament.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the leaders to work out their differences, while newspapers in Nepal warned that failure to find a solution could mean a return to a civil war in which at least 16,000 people died.
The Maoists have been agitating for a return to government ever since Prachanda’s resignation and earlier this month brought the country to a standstill by holding a nationwide general strike to press their demands.
The strike was called off after six days, following intense international pressure and a mass rally in the capital Kathmandu protesting against the disruption of schools and businesses.
Almost 24,000 members of the Maoists’ army were confined to camps around the country after the end of the civil war in late 2006.
Around 4,000 were formally discharged this year after UN checks found they did not qualify as soldiers, and several thousand more are thought to have drifted away from the camps and returned home in the intervening years.
But more than 15,000 are estimated to remain and their fate is a key stumbling block in the peace process.
Separately, the IMF approved on Friday an immediate loan of US$42.05 million to help address Nepal’s economic troubles.
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