RPP Chairman Senior Vice-chairman Rabindra Mishra has acknowledged that he has yet to understand the party and wants to move forward understanding it.
“Only experience gives the maturity that experience can give, mere ideological knowledge does not give,” Mishra has said responding to queries about RPP Chairman Rajendra Lingden’s comment that he has yet to understand the party. “RPP has senior leaders who have worked for 30 years. They said about me who joined RPP 15 months ago that he is new and does not know RPP well. That is absolutely normal.”
He, however, has pointed that he has visited across the country in the short time and talked with RPP cadres. “General RPP members, local leaders and senior leaders have been adequately helping me know and understand RPP,” he has added. “Chairman, other senior leaders, leaders and cadres in districts have helped me. That’s why, yes, I haven’t understood RPP.”
He has stressed that he had yet to understand journalism despite working in the sector for two decades and pointed that he has been in politics for just six years and in RPP for only 15 months.
Chairman Lingden had commented that Mishra has yet to understand the party answering a question by Raju Thapa in a talk show on Avenues Television about the instruction issued by the party’s steering committee including Prakash Chandra Lohani and Mishra to call back RPP lawmaker from the post of Koshi speaker.
“What has Rabindra Mishra understood about RPP? He came just days earlier. What has he understood RPP? He has yet to understand RPP. He has just arrived. It’s just a year or a year and a half. He said what he felt about whether to join the government was right or not, become speaker of the provincial assembly right or not.”
Ambar Bahadur Bista, who was elected lawmaker on an RPP ticket, was elected speaker of Koshi on January 9. The steering committee chaired by Lohani and including Mishra had instructed the party leadership to withdraw Bista’s candidacy as the election process was going on.
But the party has yet to formally discuss the issue even though RPP leaders have been speaking in the media about whether the issue should be discussed in the party or not.
“I appointed the steering committee chairman issuing a letter. Can the steering committee chairman be above the party chairman elected by the general convention to instruct?” Lingden asked. “I have already said even in another television. The statute has clearly stated, the steering committee will remain as advisor. That is a body to advise about going to the government and political appointments.”
He added that the central committee can seek advice from the steering committee about whether to join the government if it deems necessary. “That is a body to give advice convening a meeting if the central committee were to seek advice from the steering committee. That is not a body to issue instruction,” he stressed. “That is a body to advise even though its name is steering committee. It is clear in the statute.”
