Kathmandu, July 10 (Inditop.com) Though they ended their two-month siege of parliament, Nepal’s former guerrilla party, the Maoists, Friday indicated they would keep up their opposition to the new ruling alliance by rejecting its policies and programmes for the current financial year.
“Since this government was formed due to an illegal and unconstitutional step taken by the president (Ram Baran Yadav), its policies and programmes too are illegal and unconstitutional,” veteran Maoist leader and former finance minister Baburam Bhattarai told the media Friday.
The top leaders of the once underground party met Friday morning to decide their reaction to the policies, which were presented in parliament Thursday by the president on behalf of the government of Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.
Bhattarai said his party would be holding talks with other parties outside the ruling coalition for a united opposition to the freshly tabled policies.
Calling the Nepal government `anti-people’, he said the policies, though they may sound attractive, were a ploy to dupe the public.
Aware of the Maoist resistance, the prime minister’s party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, Friday asked all its 108 lawmakers to be present in the house Sunday when the policies would have to be voted, a day ahead of Monday’s budget.
With the Maoists holding 238 – nearly 40 percent – of the seats in the 601-member parliament, the leading party might face an embarrassment if all its allies do not come to its support and it has to seek a vote to pass the policies.
Another opposition party, the Rastriya Janashakti Party, Friday said the policies and programmes of the communist-led government were no different from those tabled by earlier governments. The proof would be in the implementation, RJP deputy chief and former finance minister Prakash Chandra Lohani said.
Even the ruling party’s biggest ally, the Nepali Congress that has 112 MPs, is not fully supportive of the new policies.
Its youth wing Friday criticised the document for the absence of youth-oriented programmes, and said it would seek the inclusion of pro-youth policies.
