Just four months away from the deadline to promulgate the new constitution, the big three -UCPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML -- have initiated discussions about forming a State Restructuring Commission to suggest a federal model, carving out provinces, and fixing the number and names of the federal units. This suggests that the parties are inclined to defer the task of delineating and demarcating the federal units till after promulgation of the new constitution. [break]
"As state restructuring is a task of a very important and grave nature, we are for resolving this issue by forming a state restructuring commission," UML Chairman Jhala Nath Khanal told reporters while emerging from the UML parliamentary party meeting.
Moreover, he is for giving sufficient time for the restructuring work even after forming a commission. "The commission will resolve the issues that it can resolve. If it fails to settle any of the contentious issues, we can still promulgate the constitution on time by putting in a provision that would allow the newly-elected government to accomplish the unresolved work of state restructuring by formulating necessary laws," he further clarified. He said there is no way the issue can be dealt with in haste.
The NC is the party that pressed the other political parties for formation of the sate restructuring commission. The largest party UCPN (Maoist) has not spoken against the idea so far.
The heads of the three major parties held discussions on this issue at a meeting of the High Level Political Mechanism (HLPM) Friday. Leaders in the HLPM also agreed to take the final decision at the next meeting of the mechanism scheduled for Monday. After the Friday meeting, Maoist Vice-Chairman Narayankaji Shrestha said further discussions were needed before taking any decision over the matter.
According to sources, UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal also had indicated a similar way out during a meeting with foreign diplomats.
"In case of the deadline being missed, one alternative may be to go ahead and promulgate a partial constitution that mentions a specific deadline for settling the contentious issues," the source quoted Dahal as saying at the meeting in Kathmandu with envoys of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
UML members against special right
Meanwhile, UML Constituent Assembly (CA) members have raised a strong voice against the decision of the CA Committee on State Restructuring and Distribution of State Powers to ensure a political preferential right to members of the community with the largest population in comparison to other communities in a given province.
The provision suggested by the committee means that members of the largest community in the province will be given special preference for important posts like chief minister of the province, for two terms. The other communities will be deprived of this right and will not be allowed into such posts even through free competition.
Most CA members at the UML parliamentary party meeting stood against this provision. "This is against democratic principles and even against the theory of natural justice," said CA member Ravindra Adhikari.
The UML is also for debating not only the 14-province model but other models as well. The CA committee on state restructuring in its preliminary draft report recently suggested a 14-province model for deliberation by the CA full house. The model was passed by a simple majority of the 43-member committee while another model prepared by the same committee was defeated in the voting.
"We need to hold further discussions on the 14-province and six-province models and even other models. And finally we have to come up with a model suitable to the ground reality of our country," Khanal said.
According to a member, most UML members at the parliamentary party meeting were against any federal model based on ethnicity and against giving preferential rights to a particular ethnic group. All the seven UML members in the CA committee had voted in favor of the 14-province model while they were divided on the issue of ensuring political preferential right.
thira@myrepublica.com
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