General Secretary of the Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) Ishwor Pokhrel on Thursday revealed that his party and the Nepali Congress would not accept Maoist leadership for any future government so long as the rebels would not succumb to them. He told mediapersons that his party’s advocacy for a government of national consensus meant a government under the leadership of his own party UML or the Nepali Congress. He argued that Maoists, though elected as the largest political party of Nepal, have not transformed into a civilian party yet.
However, he tried to assure mediapersons that current Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal was likely to resign to diffuse the intensity of the opposition against the government by the Maoist party. “Even if there can be no national consensus, the prime minister will resign to facilitate the nation’s politics,” he told the participants at Reporters Club in Kathmandu.
Maoists have accused the current coalition government of trying to reverse the peace process and transformation agenda.
The Nepali Congress Party and the UML are the parliamentary parties previously loyal to monarchy while the Maoist rebels, through a decade-long armed insurgency, emerged as a new force seeking bigger changes to be accompanied by a mixed type of political system yet to be defined.
Currently, Maoist fighters have been temporarily kept in cantonments along with their weapons under the UN supervision as per the Comprehensive Peace Accord signed on 21 November 2006.
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