Kathmandu, July 15 (IANS) After frittering away 24 months, Nepal’s major parties Thursday said they would start working on the new constitution from Saturday.
The two biggest ruling parties – caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist as well as its main ally, the Nepali Congress – and the opposition Maoists also agreed to complete the much-awaited constitution one month before its scheduled deadline next year.
Instead of May 27, the parties have now pledged to complete the constitution by April 13, 2011.
However, the promise will not be taken seriously, given the parties’ long record of constantly failing deadlines.
In the past, they were unable to hold elections in time, promulgate a new constitution in time or even dismantle the parallel army of the Maoists.
A test of their resolve will be the new commission that will have the task of restructuring Nepal into federal states.
Currently, the republic has five development zones and 75 districts.
Narayan Kaji Shrestha, deputy chief of the Maoists, said the State Restructuring Commission will start work from July 31 and complete its task in two months.
But before undertaking these tasks, the parties face the labour of electing a new prime minister July 21.
With all three parties in the fray, even Thursday there was little progress in forming an alliance that would be able to get simple majority in the 601-member parliament during the vote.
To complicate matters further, 17 smaller parties, including members of the caretaker coalition government, condemned the decisions taken by the big three, saying the three did not represent the nation.
‘The three big parties bypassed the other parties,’ Commerce Minister Rajendra Mahato said. ‘They have been trying to lord over us but even we, the smaller parties, have candidates capable of becoming prime minister.’
(Sudeshna Sarkar can be contacted at sudeshna.s@ians.in)
