CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli has taken exception to the process of unification of Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) with CPN (Unified Socialist).
JSP Chairman Upendra Yadav met Oli at the latter’s residence in Balkot on Saturday and Yadav briefed a few JSP leaders about the meeting on Sunday.
“There was environment for JSP participating in the government but you all spoiled it. The environment to take you all in the government was vitiated due to the dialogue for unification with Unified Socialist,” a JSP leader quoted Yadav’s briefing about Oli’s comment.
CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal quit the coalition with Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (Unified Socialist) and became PM on December 25 with support of CPN-UML, Rastriya Swatantra Party, RPP, Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP), Janamat Party and Nagarik Unmukti Party after NC President Sher Bahadur Deuba refused to make him PM first.
Dahal wanted to take Unified Socialist, formed after split in UML, along in the new coalition but Oli vetoed addition of his bete noire Madhav Kumar Nepal in the new coalition.
The task force for unification of JSP and Unified Socialist also met and exchanged each other’s documents as Yadav and Oli were meeting at Balkot on Saturday. “Both the parties will find out similarities and differences between the documents,” Unified Socialist General Secretary Bedu Ram Bhusal told Setopati.
Govinda Chaudhary of JSP and Bijay Paudel of Unified Socialist have been asked by their respective parties to find out similarities and differences in the documents.
JSP had demanded either vice-president or deputy speaker with the ruling coalition. But Rastriya Swatantra Party got the post of deputy speaker while Maoist Center wants to keep vice-president. PM Dahal, meanwhile, has kept two ministries with himself to give to JSP if the latter joins the government.
The JSP leader claimed that Dahal had proposed to split existing ministries to give additional ministries to JSP but the party rejected citing that it will generate controversy.
Unified Socialist Chairman Nepal has already stated that there can be no unification if JSP joins the Dahal government.
Yadav is miffed with the coalition complaining that he was not heard during the coalition’s meeting pointing that the coalition partners seemed to imply that JSP would get only what they would give. “We could not even present our position. Our opinions were neither heard while preparing the common minimum program nor were we consulted for the Cabinet expansion,” Yadav recently told Setopati.
Yadav reportedly has been lobbying for the post of vice-president for the party. He apparently wants to make Ram Sahay Prasad Yadav, who was elected from Bara-2, vice-president and contest the by-election from that constituency.
