CC preparing questionnaire for voting

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Failure on the part of the Constitutional Committee to foresee the urgency to put unsettled issues to vote has delayed the voting process in the Constituent Assembly, at least for a few days.

The CC was supposed to begin presenting unsettled issues to vote in the Constituent Assembly today, but it failed to do so for it did not have questions ready. Ultimately the scheduled CA meeting was postponed.

CC Chairman Nilambar Acharya said models of unsettled constitutional issues had been distributed to all the CA members, but consensus was still lacking. Acharya said they will have to break unsettled issues in parts for which consensus was needed. He, however, refused to comment further on CC’s preparation regarding the voting process. Rastriya Janashakti Party lawmaker Prakash Chandra Lohani was furious over parties’ failure to forge consensus in the last four years and handing over the job to CA members at the last moment.

“Since the nature of the questions are rather complicated, it will take time to settle the remaining 117 disputes issues through voting, and we have only 18 days,” said Lohani. “If a constitution were to be drafted on time, leaders of major political parties must be able to forge consensus at the earliest. We might need at least a week only to finalise the procedure to prepare the questionnaire.”

NC leader Ramchandra Paudel said summarised forms of questions needed to be presented in the CA for voting for which the CC chairman might need experts’ help. Paudel, however, did not say when the CC will be able to present a final list of questions.

NC lawmaker Ramesh Lekhak said the parties were preparing to begin sending questionnaire to CA from tomorrow.

Vote for 14 states: UCPN-M

KATHMANDU: The Unified CPN-Maoist parliamentary party on Thursday directed all its Constituent Assembly members to vote for 14-state model of federalism and directly elected presidential system, unless the parties agreed to compromise on their agendas. During the meeting of the parliamentary party, held at its office in Singha Durbar, Chief Whip Dev Gurung issued the direction. According to CA member Raj Kaji Gurung, Gurung told the CA members that the party could compromise on fewer states and mixed election system only if the parties were ready to agree with their agendas.