Nepal’s President Ram Baran Yadav yesterday urged the constituent assembly to elect the country’s prime minister according to the statute.

Yadav had given a week’s time - which expired on Sunday - to the parties for forming a
government of national unity.

“As the parties failed to form a national unity government through a political consensus, the president has sent a letter to the constituent assembly to elect a new prime minister of the country,” Xinhua reported citing a press statement issued by the president’s office.

It said since the constituent assembly has been elected, forming a government is a
matter of urgency.

After the president’s letter, the parliament secretariat will start the process of election of the prime minister probably this week.

Nepal went to the polls on November 19 to choose a new constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution aimed at ending years of political unrest.

The Nepali Congress (NC) emerged the largest party in the 601-member constituent assembly by securing 194 seats. However, it cannot form government on its own without the support of other parties. Despite multiple rounds of talks in the past two months, political parties were unable to forge consensus.

The NC, a major party, has already said that its priority would be to form the government according to the interim constitution. The NC has selected its president Sushil Koirala as its prime ministerial candidate.

The NC is holding talks with the second largest party, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) regarding the formation of the government. The third party, Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist has already announced that it would stay out of government formation and would not attend all-party meetings summoned by the NC.

The CPN-UML had asked the NC to come up with a clear roadmap for power-sharing before any agreement on forming the government. It has also been pressing for elections for the posts of president and vice president, saying people had given a fresh mandate to political parties through the constituent assembly polls.

The Maoists waged a civil war from 1996 to 2006 in which more than 16,000 people died. They joined mainstream politics in 2008 through a first constituent assembly election.

That assembly was disbanded in May 2012 after failing to achieve consensus on the text despite several extensions, as the parties squabbled over power-sharing.

 

 

 

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