Minister Posta Bahadur Bogati tabled the bill to amend the Interim Constitution after the agitating lawmakers welcomed the prime minister’s announcement at the parliament meeting and agreed to allow resumption of House proceedings.[break]
Madhes-based lawmakers from across various political parties including the prime minister’s own party had obstructed parliamentary proceedings on Thursday, demanding the scrapping of the agreement on adopting the 11-province model for state restructuring.
“As far as I understand it, the agreement which was reportedly reached among the leaders in preliminary stage for discussion. An agreement cannot be final at first and the leaders will certainly be ready to accommodate the concerns of all sides before it is adopted,” Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai said while addressing parliament. He said he believed the leaders would certainly address the lawmakers concerns and allay their misgivings.
The prime minister, in his speech, repeatedly urged the protesting lawmakers to end their obstruction and cooperate in passing the bill to amend the Interim Constitution.
The government tabled the bill to amend Article 70 of the Interim Constitution with a view to shortening the procedure for endorsing the final draft of the new constitution. As per the existing provision, the existing article requires several days before the constitution bill is tabled for voting in the full CA.
Opposition leader Upendra Yadav, who led the lawmakers in the obstruction of parliament, welcomed the prime minister’s speech. He claimed that they agreed to end the obstruction as Prime Minister Bhattarai and UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the understanding reached on delineating the country into 11 provinces no longer existed and a new agreement would be reached. “Both the prime minister and Maoist Chairman Dahal have clearly said that the agreement doesn’t exit any longer and a new agreement will be reached even though the prime minister in his speech here didn’t clearly announce a scrapping of the deal,” Yadav said in parliament.
However, leaders from two other major parties, Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN UML, rubbished Yadav’s claim.
They said the agreement reached on adopting an 11-province model was still in place and the parties had not agreed to scrap it.
“If the 11-province model is dropped, all the other things in the package will be dropped also because those other things were also settled under a similar procedure,” NC parliamentary party leader Ram Chandra Paudel told reporters at parliament premises. He said that the same standard they adopted while reaching an agreement on the 11-province model was also used while reaching agreement on 11-province model was also used whole reaching agreement on system of governance and judiciary. “These issues can’t drop one thing in isolation and give continuity to others. They should be dealt with in a package,” he explained.
Paudel said that the prime minister described the deal as preliminary because they haven’t codified it in writing.
Also, CPN UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal said Yadav’s claim that the agreement had come to an end was completely wrong. He said the Maoist party hasn’t backtracked from the agreement nor had the prime minister’s speech in parliament indicated as such.
“The government is in place. We will move ahead as per that same agreement. If they decide to backtrack from this agreement, several other agreements will be disrupted,” said Khanal. He said such a move will eventually make it impossible to promulgate the new constitution by May 27.
He said if the UCPN (Maoist) backtracks from the 11-province model, it will result in disruption of all other related issues as well. “I don’t believe the Maoist leaders are for doing such things,” he said.
Two former ministers engage in scuffle
Lawmakers and former ministers from Madhesi People´s Rights Forum-Republican--Surita Kumari Sah and Ahmad Ekwal Sah--engaged in a scuffle right outside the CA hall, Friday evening.
The scuffle took place after former state minister for information and communications Surita slapped former minister Akwal Ahmad shortly after he exited from the CA hall after a legislature-parliament meeting. A serious verbal altercation followed and other lawmakers had to intervene to prevent the situation from getting nastier.
Surita Kumari told media that she slapped Minister Ahmad as he had scolded her in the afternoon, alleging that she did not sign in a memorandum of Broader Madhesi Front (BMF) that asked the major parties to revise the 11-province federal model. The BMF has announced a series of protest programs against the 11-province federal model that proposes to delineate Madhes into three separate provinces.
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