Left parties in the ruling coalition have moved forward for formation of a socialist center after consent of lawmaker Baburam Bhattarai.
Bhattarai, who was not positive toward the proposal of CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal to form a socialist center, has hinted at his consent through a tweet on Thursday.
“I had pointed at two or three ways for formation of alternative force. One, transformation of old parties. Two, polarization of those with similar ideology from different parties. Three, birth of new from zero. The current talk about socialist center is combination of the first and second,” he tweeted Thursday night.
Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) had recently expelled Bhattarai and eight other leaders from the party. Leaders close to him have called his consent for socialist center a betrayal pointing that he had talked about forming a new party. A leader close to Bhattarai told Setopati that he had not provided any answer to the questions about betrayal.
Dahal had proposed to keep CPN before socialist center in the name during their meeting earlier in the week but Bhattarai, who has publicly been saying in recent times that he will not be part of any communist party, refused to keep CPN in the name.
Maoist leader Barsha Man Pun then reached Gorkha to try to convince Bhattarai and his efforts seem to have been successful.
Pun says that CPN (Unified Socialist) Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal and National Assembly member Bam Dev Gautam are also positive about forming socialist center. He claims that JSP Chairman Upendra Yadav is also ready to form a front. “We are preparing to conclude common manifesto and other issues through coordination committee,” Pun adds.
Left parties in the ruling coalition have decided to form socialist center after Nepali Congress (NC) took a decision through the central committee meeting to forge electoral alliance in the parliamentary election to secure majority and form government under its leadership.
“This central committee meeting takes a decision to move forward by carrying out electoral alliance with the parties in the ruling coalition through mutual dialogue targeting clear majority in the upcoming House of Representatives (HoR) and provincial assembly elections for Congress,” the decision states.
Unified Socialist Chairman Nepal has already said that the party is suspicious after the central committee's decision of NC.
NC reportedly wants to initiate dialogue for sharing seats in a way that it wins at least 85 of the 165 seats in the first-past-the-post electoral system, and will soon initiate dialogue in the coalition to that regard.
In an interview to Image Television on Thursday, Nepal said that the decision was against expectations that NC would accept existence and status of other parties. "The kind of evaluation that came especially from the NC meeting has made us a bit suspicious. We feel we have been grossly undervalued as they feel they need 60-70 percent of seats and estimate that others would win one seat or eight seats (sic)," Nepal stated.
Pun states that the left parties are opting for left unity also to show CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli their power pointing how Oli has been mocking them in recent times claiming that they are not even communist parties.
