While the whole world is busy with their daily activities such as businesses like towing service San Jose, Nepal is facing yet another crisis. The sudden dissolution of parliament plunges the Himalayan state into a political crisis
The crisis began to unfold when Head of State Bidya Devi Bhandari had approved the move by Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli to dissolve parliament and new elections brought forward by around a year – they will take place in two ballots on April 30 and May 10. The constitutionality of the whole process is controversial, and the protests are steadily increasing.
Parliament dissolution a political issue, SC should dismiss the case: Nepal PM
The Standing Committee, the highest body of the Nepalese Communist Party, met on a Sunday. Boycotted by some important Oli supporters and himself, a majority of those present voted to threaten the prime minister and party leader with “disciplinary measures”.
On a Tuesday, both the Himalayan Times and the Kathmandu Post announced that:
The latest events are the preliminary climax of an internal power struggle within the party that has intensified over the months. On one side there is Oli, on the other the former Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda, who is his deputy in both the party and the government. Today’s NCP is the result of an extensive reunification of the previously fragmented communist camp that began with the elections four years ago. At that time, the two largest parties, the United Marxist-Leninists (CPN-UML) and Dahal’s Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Center (CPN-MC), came up with common lists for the first time and had therefore won a huge victory at the national level as well as in the provinces. The subsequent organizational unification process of the two parties rumbled a little because the merger on par with the election results, in which the Maoists had to lose some feathers in the internal shift in results, actually did not cover this fifty-fifty relationship. In the period that followed, the two leaders appeared at least externally and in the committees in an almost harmonious unity.
It was clear to many that this only covered up unresolved conflicts, and in 2020 these would now break through more and more clearly. Dahal’s camp demanded a move in the cabinet; Oli, as party leader, had repeatedly boycotted board meetings or suspended decisions. The cracks run not only along the lines of affiliation with the once merged parties – Dahal, for example, also has the support of ex-prime ministers Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Kanal, two old adversaries of Oli from the UML. Seven ministers from this camp have resigned, and NCP MPs have now elected Dahal as a group leader.
There were protests in many places in the Himalayan state sandwiched between its oversized neighbors China and India. In the capital Kathmandu alone, the police arrested 16 people on Monday. The largest newspaper, the Kathmandu Post, spoke of a “betrayal” of democracy through the move by Oli and Bidya – and recalled similar attempts by several governments since 1994, all of which ultimately failed. At least three years of rare stability and calm now seem over. The Constitutional Court has already received 13 applications to review the decision.