Nepal’s Opposition Maoists on Friday accused the Prime Minister of breaking a pledge to resign, sparking a new row between the three main parties less than a week after they agreed to share power. The Maoist party said the PM had broken a verbal commitment to step down within five days of an agreement reached on late last Friday to secure the support of Opposition legislators for a bill to extend Parliament’s term.
“We plan to expose the dishonesty of this government, which has betrayed the agreement we reached,” Maoist party spokesman Dinanath Sharma told AFP.
The ruling Communist Party of Nepal (UML) confirmed that Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had said he would stand down within five days, although a written agreement signed by the party leaders did not specify a timeframe. The party said he wanted first to secure commitments from the former rebels on key issues relating to the peace process and the drafting of a new national Constitution.
“We now gather that the priority of the Maoists is not peace and Constitution-writing but power,” UML leader Pradeep Gyawali told AFP. The Parliament, or Constituent Assembly, was elected in 2008 with a two-year mandate to complete the peace process launched after the 10-year war between Maoist rebels and the state, and to draft a new national Constitution. But it failed to complete either task on time, hampered by fierce disagreements betw-een the Maoists, the largest party in Parliament, and their political rivals.