Election govt : CJ Regmi to get last offer today
KATHMANDU, FEB 24 -
The four major political parties will make a final request to Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi on Sunday to head an interim election government before seeking other alternatives.
Separately, the President’s Office is also preparing to reach out to CJ Regmi on Sunday to ascertain if he is ready to lead government. Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai will meet CJ Regmi first and request him to lead the government, said Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Kaji Shrestha. PM Bhattarai will visit CJ Regmi with political and constitutional documents prepared by a cross-party task force and will discuss the spirit and content of these documents before taking the CJ’s consent. “If the CJ declines, top leaders will meet on Sunday and make a final request to him,” said Shrestha.
The parties will ask CJ Regmi to shoulder the responsibility as the country is reeling under a serious political crisis and very few alternatives remain to resolve the protracted political deadlock, DPM Shrestha said.
Multiple sources from the parties said that the CJ was not positive on leading the government until Saturday as he is awaiting Sunday for a Supreme Court verdict on a writ seeking the annulment of the decision to appoint him to lead the election government . The apex court, which has postponed the hearing on the writ twice, is all set to take it up on Sunday. If the SC fails to deliver a verdict on Sunday, the major parties will not wait for the final verdict to come out.
To persuade CJ Regmi, a cross-party task force of the four major political parties has proposed giving Regmi until November to hold elections if his government fails to do so within the first week of June. In an earlier proposal, the parties had decided to recall the CJ and appoint the next PM within 15 days if CJ Regmi fails to hold elections by early June.
“Now the ball is in the CJ’s court and his decision is crucial,” said Bimalendra Nidhi, a member of the cross-party task force from the Nepali Congress (NC). Agni Kharel, another member of the task force from the CPN-UML, said: “CJ Regmi should make it clear whether he wants to head the government in his present capacity or after resigning. Parties will not wait for him much longer.” The task force has also proposed that CJ Regmi be given the full authority to pick candidates for the Cabinet.
The political parties are mulling an alternative to this proposal in the event of the CJ declining or the SC barring him from leading the election government .
Although the cross-party task force has finalised a nine-point political document that will assist the CJ in leading the government, another document dealing with how to remove constitutional and legal hurdles is also taking final shape and will be ready by Sunday morning. The major parties have provided feedback to the task force upon consultations with legal experts.
According to Nidhi, a few thorny issues, like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), the distribution of citizenship and the updating of the voter list, have yet to be agreed to within the task force. However, top leaders of the major political parties are said to have reached a tentative agreement on settling these issues in a bid to hold early polls. “The NC, Maoists and Madhesi parties have agreed on the issue of citizenship and updating the voter’s list, but consent has yet to be had from the UML. Next, the Congress and UML do not agree with the Maoists on the issue of the TRC. So we have decided to forward these unresolved issues to the top leaders of the four parties,” said Nidhi.
The UCPN (Maoist) are in favour of conditional amnesty, which the NC and UML are against. However, parties have agreed to citizenship by descent and to update the voter list with those who reach 18 years of age by mid-April 2013.
Source: The Kathmandu Post
