CPN (Maoist Center) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli have agreed to equally share the remaining four-year term as prime minister (PM).
“Our chairman and PM (Dahal) have agreed on a package of many things. Sharing the remaining term of the government at two years each is one of those agreements,” a UML office-bearer confirmed with Setopati.
This means Dahal will remain PM for the next two years and will be succeeded by Oli after that.
Dahal had quit the pre-election alliance with Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (Unified Socialist) on December 25, 2022 and became prime minister (PM) with support of CPN-UML, Rastriya Swatantra Party, RPP, Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP), Janamat Party and Nagarik Unmukti Party after Nepali Congress (NC) President Sher Bahadur Deuba refused to make him PM first.
Oli had assured NC that UML will not ally with Maoist Center at any cost and would instead ally with NC to form the new government to encourage Deuba to break the agreement to make Dahal PM first.
Dahal and Oli had agreed to equally share the five-year term even then.
But the coalition was broken in just two months before the election for president around a year ago. NC, Maoist Center, JSP and Unified Socialist had then decided to revive the pre-election alliance.
Unified Socialist Chairman Madhav Kumar Nepal was to become PM for a year in between the two-year terms of Dahal and Deuba as per that agreement.
The latest deal between Dahal and Oli has ended any chances of Nepal becoming PM for now even though the Maoists have urged Unified Socialist, formed after splitting from UML, to join the new ruling coalition.
Oli is also positive about including the party in the coalition but the old agreement of making Nepal PM has automatically been broken after the previous coalition was broken, according to a Maoist leader.
“We are now on a new path. We expect that Nepal will remain together with us in this journey of communist polarization,” the leader has stated.
The ruling coalition between Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (Maoist Center) has broken giving way to a new coalition of the Maoists with the main opposition CPN-UML.
The meeting between Maoist Chairman and Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane and Janata Samajwadi Party (JSP) Chairman Upendra Yadav held at Baluwatar Sunday night agreed to form a new ruling coalition.
UML has 79 seats in the House of Representatives (HoR), Maoist Center 32, and RSP 21, and JSP 12, and the four parties together can muster the 138 seats necessary to form the government.
