Parties squabble over President‚ PM's powers

PRAKASH ACHARYA

KATHMANDU: Although the major political parties struck a deal on the forms of governance and federalism yesterday, they are yet to settle some of the contentious issues.

Leaders are wracking their brains on power-sharing between the President and prime minister, boundaries of federal units, election of chief ministers in pradeshes, election of members of National Assembly from federal units and whether to change the existing administrative structure of districts.

The Unified CPN-Maoist has been insisting to provide rights related to handling defence, foreign affairs and the relations between the federal and pradesh governments to the President. Nepali Congress and CPN-UML, on the other hand, claim this would make the President autocratic.

Parties are yet to decide whether the President or PM or both should have the power to dissolve Parliament for fresh elections, operate the national army and appoint governors; whether the Parliament should endorse the appointment of ambassadors and representatives for foreign countries; and whether the President can direct the PM to show majority support in the House in case of no-confidence motion.

As the United Democratic Front (UDMF) has been demanding direct election of even vice president and the other parties are against it, the parties are yet to settle the issue. The parties sans UDMF are advocating that the vice president should be elected through an electoral college and are saying that it has no justification to elect the vice president through direct election.

Meanwhile, the seven-member task force today submitted its report to the Problem Resolution Sub-Committee of the Constitutional Committee by settling almost all 117 issues and suggested that the sub-committee should sort out the remaining contentious issues itself.

Sub-committee member and Nepali Congress leader Ramchandra Paudel said the sub-committee would resolve the issues tomorrow and forward them to the CC for further processing. UDMF has some reservations on the number and boundaries of the federal units, but the front has agreed on almost all other issues, Paudel said.

Unsettled issues

Formation of electoral-college to elect five members from each federal unit to represent the National Assembly.

Whether the representatives of the local units should be included in the electoral-college

Whether to include proportional representation and downsizing the number of members in the Pradesh Sabhas (the CA’s thematic committee has proposed 35-member Pradesh Sabha)

Procedure to election chief ministers of Pradesh Sabhas. Three parties for indirect election of the chief ministers while UDMF is lobbying for direct election