Taking part in the deliberations in the CA, UML members advocated two opposite models on electing the prime minister. [break]
Those close to party chairman Jhala Nath Khanal advocated direct election of executive prime minister while other members close to Khanal´s archrival KP Oli lobbied for the Westminster model of electing prime minister from the parliament.
Party secretary Bishnu Poudel, who is senior most UML member in the CA committee, claimed that the party officially stands for election of executive prime minister by the parliament. He said the UML CA members had also voted for the same in the CA committee.
However, another UML member Ratna Gurung said five of the eight UML members in the committee were for directly-elected executive prime minister. She also expressed objection to the committee´s decision not to register their differing views in the committee report.
In the voting held in the committee on December 1, all the eight UML members in the 43-member committee had cast votes in favor electing prime minister by the parliament. But later five of them demanded that they be allowed to withdraw their votes.
In deliberations on Sunday, Poudel and Pradip Gyawali said they had to sacrifice the party´s stated earlier stance for directly elected prime minister during the voting in the CA committee for the sake of reaching consensus on writing constitution. "We can´t write constitution if all the political parties stand by their policies. Writing constitution is not a task of compilation of the political parties´ manifestos," Gyawali said.
Giriraj Mani Pokharel of UCPN (Maoist) advocated popularly elected executive presidential system.
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