BUTWAL, Feb 20: Most of the 1,816 delegates at the ongoing national convention of the CPN-UML have conveyed a strong message to the party leadership urging them to take on the ruling Maoists with firmness and take a path of reconciliation with the main opposition party Nepali Congress. [break]
Head of the UML publicity wing, Ishwar Pokharel, told a daily press briefing here on Friday that the leaders of the 20 groups who started a group discussion Thursday completed their presentations on Friday. “The main ideological conflict is with the Maoists,” said Pokharel. “So, the delegates have suggested that there should be no mistake about confronting the Maoists and also the party should be made vibrant.”
Pokharel quoted the delegates as saying that the party should take a “path of reconciliation” with the Nepali Congress though the two parties don’t share the same ideology. Referring to the NC’s agreement to sign up to scientific land reforms initiatives, he said the NC is not always bad.
The delegates also asked the leaders to review past mistakes by the party and come up with a concrete plan for the future.
The delegates have also clearly expressed the view that the party’s main guiding principle – People’s Multiparty Democracy – shouldn’t be amended or reviewed at any cost. This is a big blow to outgoing party chief Jhala Nath Khanal, who has proposed a slight update on the document propounded by the late UML chief Madan Bhandari.
The delegates have said unequivocally that the top party office-holders – chairman, vice-chairman, general secretary and secretary – should be elected through direct ballot, not by the central committee which is elected by the delegates.
The group presentations followed presentations by two departments – on discipline and audit. After that, Khanal and another leader will give their replies to questions raised by the delegates on their political document and statute amendment proposal respectively.
Meanwhile, the top leaders haven’t yet come to an agreement on who should hold the position of top job – party chairman, though the three leaders – Khanal, KP Sharma Oli and Madhav Kumar Nepal – have been on continuous discussion for the last 2-3 days. Oli, who is believed to have garnered Nepal’s support for the top job, told journalists earlier in the day that there will be an election if consensus doesn’t work. “Competition is not a bad thing,” said Oli, claiming however that they have crossed 80 percent of the work to come up with a consensus candidate. He said the name can’t be disclosed now. He also talked highly about Nepal, calling him a guardian of the party.
On the other hand, more and more young leaders have declared their wish to stand for the post of central committee member. They include Yogesh Bhattarai, Rajan Bhattarai, Khaga Raj Adhikari, Sher Dhan Rai, Rabindra Adhikari, Bhanu Bhakta Dhakal, Ghanashyam Bhusal, Thakur Gaire, Arun Nepal, Binda Pandey, Dr Bijay Poudel and Shree Nath Baral, among others. The new central committee will have about 100 to 115 members. “There should be at least 33 percent youths in the central committee,” Rajan Bhattarai told myrepublica.com.
Lenin is now along side Marx
After the delegates strongly protested no portrait of late Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin along side that of late German revolutionary Karl Marx in the hall of the closed-door session, the leaders brought the new portrait of Lenin and put it alongside Marx’s.
Pokharel told the press that it was not intentional. “Marx is the source of all communist movements,” said Pokharel, adding that the party wanted to start a tradition of putting less number of photos. tilak@myrepublica.com
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