CPN (Unified Socialist) looks set to remove the age limit of 70 years.
The party formed after splitting from CPN-UML had inherited the age limit from UML. It now looks set to either do away with the age limit or extend it to 75 years.
UML, on its part, has also removed the age limit to allow Chairman KP Sharma Oli to serve another term should he wish so ostensibly to accommodate Mukunda Neupane who returned back in the party from Unified Socialist.
Both Unified Socialist Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal and senior leader Jhala Nath Khanal have already crossed 70 with the latter set to cross even 75 in March 2025.
The 70th secretariat meeting of Unified Socialist has put off the debate for age limit at least until statute convention or general convention by taking decision to allow even those above 70 in the central committee.
Deputy General Secretary Ganga Lal Tuladhar, on behalf of Nepal, brought the proposal of removing the age limit during the secretariat meeting on Tuesday. Tuladhar also suggested to extend the age limit to 75 as another option to accommodate both Nepal and Khanal.
General Secretary Ghanashyam Bhusal, who has been advocating for the age limit of 70, then sarcastically suggested, according to a Unified Socialist leader, to ‘extend it to 75 this time and 80 the next time.’
Bhusal then pointed that there is no history of any communist leader in the world easily handing over party leadership to another person, and added that it would not be a new thing even in Unified Socialist.
“The age limit of 70 years has almost become irrelevant now. UML brought that. It has also removed it. There is no meaning for us to keep it,” Khanal told Setopati.
Article 64 of the UML statute, before removal of the age limit, mandated that any leader elected or nominated as member or office-bearer of executive committees should not have crossed 70 years. The provision, however, allowed any leader elected or nominated to that post before completing 70 years to serve that term even after completing 70 years.
Khanal had presented the proposal for 70-year age limit in UML as acting general secretary during the eighth general convention held in Butwal in February 2009 to attract and incentivize younger leaders when he was just 58.
Senior UML leaders Bharat Mohan Adhikari and Siddhi Lal Singh had to take political retirement due to the provision. But UML has already removed the provision to pave the way for another term of Oli while Unified Socialist also looks set to do away with it for the sake of Nepal and Khanal.
That means Nepal and Khanal—who ironically have already led UML for a total of15 and 13 years respectively—would compete to lead Unified Socialist in the next general convention.
