UPDATES ON KHANAL ELECTION

By Bhola B Rana

Kathmandu, 3 Feb.: Unlike Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, Khanal was elected from constituency No.1 from the tea producing district of Ilam in the April 2008 constituent assembly (CA) election in which Maoists emerged as Nepal’s biggest political party.
Election for the three candidates was held simultaneously; no lawmaker was allowed to cast a negative vote.
Paudel garnered 122 votes while Gachedhar got 67 votes.
Only 557 lawmakers cast their votes among 598 legislators.
Nepal lost election from two constituencies in the CA election and was nominated to parliament after a lawmaker resigned and was elected government with Maoist support.
Maoists turned against Nepal following the vote and his running of government.
Khanal has some experience in government [correction from previous report] as minister of agriculture.
He’s married to a Newar from the capital and has a son.
Following an amendment in the party statute, Khanal was elected chairman in 2010 by the Butwal party convention to succeed General Secretary Nepal as chief of country’s third largest communist party.
Khanal was member of standing committee before his election of party chief and is a graduate from Tri-Chandra Campus. Khanal was founding member of CPN (ML) then based in Jhapa.
Ram Chandra Paudel, a bitter NC candidate for prime minister, dsaid the ‘dramatic decision’ between UML and Maoists was an attempt to ‘confise people’ and called the understanding an ‘ unfortunate letdown’.
Khanal is the fourth communist prime minister after the pall of the partyless panchayat in 1990; he’s the third premier from UML.
Manmohan Adhikari of the UML was the world’s first communist elected prime minister.
Nepal was the second communist leader to be appointed government chief before after Maoist Chairman Prachanda who resigned in nine
months after he couldn’t implement a decision to sack then Army Chief Gen. Rukmangud Katawal.
Thursday’s election of Khanal confirms communists are Nepal’s dominant force replacing NC after the 2008 CA election.
NC—Nepal’s oldest party that says it believes in liberal democracy—is now the second party.
But before the election, Girija Prasad Koirala gave equal weight age to Maoists and gave them equal seats with UML in a self-appointed parliament that declared a republic.
Koirala reduced his party’s dominance in parliament to communists.
Paudel said the NC will decide its future action after a party meeting while congratulating Khanal.
Prachanda said his party took a ‘sacrifice’ to withdrawn his candidacy with understanding without divulging details.
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