UML bigwigs sabotaging Nepal's bid?
GHANASHYAM OJHA
KATHMANDU, May 15: Something is amiss in the CPN-UML. The party establishment led by chairman Jhala Nath Khanal is, at best, not cooperating with senior leader Madhav Kumar Nepal´s bid for the premiership, and at worst, it is trying to sabotage it, claim UML leaders close to Nepal.
The party on May 9 announced Nepal as the prime ministerial candidate and formed a nine-member committee headed by Khanal to solicit support for him, but Khanal has so far participated in only one committee meeting. And party General Secretary Ishwor Pokharel has hardly shown any interest in garnering support for Nepal.
"The party leadership has not taken any sincere initiative in the past four days since the party postponed its ongoing central committee meeting on May 10 to expedite consultations with other parties," says a central leader close to the Nepal-Oli faction.
The party had formed a nine-member committee led by its Khanal and with Ishwor Pokharel, Ashok Rai, Bidhya Bhandari, KP Oli, Madhav Nepal, Surendra Pandey, Bharat Mohan Adhikari and Shankar Pokharel as members. But Ishwor Pokharel, Pandey and Rai, who are considered close to Khanal, have not taken part in any such consultation.
"Since Khanal´s men don´t want to cooperate with Nepal, he is seeking help from Bishnu Poudel and Raghu Pant, who are not in the negotiating team," says the leader.
The Nepal-Oli camp´s suspicions only grew after party leader Bam Dev Gautam, who is close to Khanal, held a clandestine meeting with the UCPN-Maoist and the Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (MPRF) Wednesday morning at Prime Minister and Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal´s residence at Baluwatar. Gautam reached Baluwatar in a police pick-up van to avoid being noticed, according to UML sources. On Wednesday, three central committee members close to Khanal -- Gokarna Bista, Ram Chandra Jha and Rajendra Shrestha -- at an informal meeting of the central committee warned the party leadership against compromises with other parties that go against party principles.
"As party general secretary, Pokharel was supposed to attend all meetings and make sincere efforts to bolster Nepal´s candidacy. But he keeps himself busy with party activities and avoids such meetings," charged the leader, adding, "It´s not a good sign for the party´s future because the party chairman and his loyalists are conspiring against the party majority."
Pokharel, who stayed in the party office throughout the day on Thursday defended himself saying: "I am busy with party activities as the central committee meeting is still on."
He argued that his major responsibility at this point is to prepare a draft of the work division among party central and politburo members.
But the Nepal-Oli camp argues that there was no urgency about the work division since the party has deferred the central committee meeting.
Supporters of Nepal suspect that Khanal might be in a mood to exact vengeance against the Nepal-Oli camp for the humiliation he suffered at the central committee and at the standing committee meeting over the army chief´s row. Khanal had given a green signal to Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, before he left for China, to remove Army Chief Rookmangud Katawal. But he found himself in a minority in the party just three months after his election to the top post, and the CPN-UML formally opposed the army chief´s sacking.
Khanal´s camp was pushed into a minority both in the central and standing committees on the issue. Five members including party senior leaders Madhav Kumar Nepal, KP Oli, Shankar Pokharel, Bidhya Bhandari and Bishnu Poudel in the 10-member Standing Committee stood against Khanal´s proposal. "Since Amrit Kumar Bohara, a nominated member in the Standing Committee, doesn´t have a vote, Khanal was technically in a minority and his proposal was defeated," says the member.
In the 116-member central committee, 52 out of 85 full members are close to the Nepal-Oli coalition while 31 alternative central members do not enjoy voting rights. Similarly, at least 24 out of 39 politburo members favor the Nepal-Oli coalition.
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