CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli has accused the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC) of acting unpolitically by obstructing the House conveniently forgetting that his party holds the record for longest stretch of House obstruction in Nepal.
He has accused NC of obstructing the House in pain of being ousted from the government despite the grand old party not yet resorting to House obstruction.
NC has been raising the issue of cooperatives scam in the House and demanding resignation of Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane claiming he is implicated in the scam. But it has yet to obstruct the House over the issue.
Addressing a program organized by an organization for freedom from ethnic oppression on Thursday, Oli has said that UML wants to address the aspirations of Nepalis for Prosperous Nepal, Happy Nepali, and stressed that democracy is needed for that.
Without taking the name of NC he has stated that politics is not a means to obstruct the House for venting ire on being forced out from the government.
UML has the record of obstructing House meeting for the longest stretch in Nepal. It continued obstructing House meeting for 143 consecutive days starting from September 8, 2021 till May 17, 2022 demanding the then speaker Agni Sapkota should either implement the party's decision to expel 14 lawmakers of the then Khanal-Nepal faction of the party by publishing a notice to that regard or resign over not implementing that decision.
The Khanal-Nepal faction of UML had split to form CPN-UML (Socialist) on August 18, 2021 as Sapkota sat on UML’s decision to expel the 14 lawmakers. The then Sher Bahadur Deuba government had brought an ordinance about political parties that allowed split of a party with support of just 20 percent in either the central committee or parliamentary party to facilitate the split of UML.
The then act about political parties required support of 40 percent in both the parliamentary party and the central committee to split any political party.
It had obstructed all the meetings of the ninth House session that started on September 8, 2021 and ended on October 28. It had also obstructed the whole of 10th House session that started on December 14, 2021 and ended on March 15, 2022. It only ended the obstruction when the 11th House session started on May 17, 2022.
