PM Koirala calls for coalition govt.; other details

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 13 March: Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala Thursday called for a coalition to rule until elections after constituent assembly election on 10 April even if his Congress party gets a majority in the coming vote.
“There should be a coalition government for a proper environment,” Koirala, who has promised to retire from politics after the assembly election said.
Koirala has never given up reigns of government and party open multi-party in 1990; he even ousted an elected government of Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai by stage-managing an internal party; Koirala did this to stage his own comeback in government.
In the absence of reliable polls, it’s difficult to predict the outcome of the first popular vote in nine years; illiterate voters, who have already voted in three parliamentary elections since 1990, don’t know the difference with a constituent assembly election.
Koirala’s Congress is expected to fare badly in the vote after massive defections to the two terai based parties pushing regional interests in an area that has been the traditional political base of national parties in the past.
The effect of the rise of regionalism, in number of seats each party collects, will be known only after elections which still many doubt will be held.
The strength of Maoists, who have never contested elections, will be known only after the vote.
The constituent assembly will have 240 directly and 335 indirectly members.
Koirala Thursday released an election manifesto of the Nepali Congress that has formally decided to go for a republic by abandoning the 238-year-old monarchy that founded modern Nepal with the Nepal Army.
Nepal Army, even while saying it will take orders from a properly elected democratic government, has already challenged and rejected group recruitment in the army negotiated by the government and three terai parties to enable elections.
In effect, the Army has said, it won’t accept group recruitment in an already national institution even if it is imposed by parties elected by assembly elections.
The army has rejected the notion of some parties the army isn’t already a national institution.
After the adoption of party manifestoes, Congress and CPN-UML
have rejected the Maoist proposal for a powerful French-style presidential system; Congress and CPN-UML have gone for a parliamentary system in elections.
This difference could delay the announcement of a republic after a vote without an agreement on the form of a republican system of government.
Congress has recommended a directly elected prime minister and a president indirectly elected by a federal and regional parliaments.
Meanwhile, amid continuing reports of election-related violence Chief Election Commissioner Bhoj Raj Pokhrel Thursday asked parties to observe an election code of conduct and observe restraint.
Dr Baburam Bhattarai of CPN (Maoist) Thursday claimed his party will win the vote.
‘Our party will win elections because we seeded a republic,” he said in Biratnagar.
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