Congress and UML agree to form a new alliance

KP Sharma Oli has once again pulled a rabbit out of his old bag of tricks.

Barely four months after supporting Pushpa Kamal Dahal’s government, the CPN-UML, the second largest party in Parliament, decided to end its political association with Dahal and merge with the Nepali Congress, the largest party.

The seemingly sudden meeting between Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba and CPN-UML leader KP Oli at the latter’s residence on Saturday laid the foundation for a possible new political alliance between the two parties.

Several senior Congress and UML politicians told the Washington Post that Deuba and Oli had already reached an agreement at a meeting at midnight on Sunday at an undisclosed location in Kathmandu, agreeing provisionally to form a new government, amend the constitution and work out a power-sharing formula that they reportedly shared with some confidants.

According to the agreement between Congress and UML, Oli will lead a new “national consensus” government for a year and a half. For the remaining term, Deuba will be prime minister, a Nepali Congress politician who is preparing a draft agreement between the two parties told the Post on Monday evening.

A four-member working group has prepared the draft agreement, which is due to be published on Tuesday. It details power-sharing arrangements, proposes constitutional changes, reviews the electoral system including proportional representation, changes to the rules for the National Assembly and discusses the size of provincial assemblies, a member of the working group said.

Ramesh Lekhak and Gyanendra Bahadur Karki of the Congress and Shankar Pokhrel and Ramesh Badal of the UML have held several rounds of talks over the past two weeks, a UML leader said.

If everything goes according to plan, the agreement will be announced publicly by Tuesday and Chairman Oli will stake his claim to the post of prime minister on Tuesday, a UML minister said.

Two Congress leaders are familiar with the meeting. According to the agreement between Oli and Deuba, Oli will lead the new government with the support of the Nepali Congress and other fringe parties. The Congress will run 10 ministries, including the Home Ministry, and the UML will run nine ministries, including the Finance Ministry, according to the draft agreement.

Similarly, the Congress and the UML will each lead three provincial governments, with the government in Madhesh to be led by a regional party.

There was also a verbal agreement to set up a high-level committee to review and propose the constitution, headed by a former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Deuba and Oli reportedly held talks last month to address some pressing national issues and agreed to amend the constitution if necessary. They are also said to have reached agreements on foreign policy, the economic crisis and governance.

A major issue that reportedly led to a dispute between Prime Minister Dahal and Oli was the appointment of the Chairman of the Securities Board of Nepal or Sebon. The appointment process was eventually called off on Saturday due to differences of opinion between the two politicians.

Sources in the Finance Ministry said the selection process had fallen victim to the political power play between the UML and the Maoist Centre, which led to the cancellation of the entire process.

But after a meeting between the two on Monday morning, a cabinet meeting later in the day decided to maintain the continuity of the old three-member committee in nominating candidates for the Sebon presidency.

Some media reports have attempted to link the recent meeting between Deuba and Oli to another development, as it came a day after the Nepali police arrested Bechan Jha, one of the suspected middlemen in the high-profile Bhutanese refugee scam.

Last year, police filed charges against politicians, bureaucrats and middlemen, alleging they defrauded hundreds of people by promising to send them to the United States as Bhutanese refugees. But despite his connection to the scam, police failed to arrest Jha.

Jha is reportedly close to many political leaders, including senior members of Congress, and the Congressional leadership may have feared that she too could be drawn into the refugee scandal.

The differences of opinion between Oli and Dahal had been steadily escalating, including over the new Sebon presidency, the appointment of ambassadors to eight countries, transitional justice and the presentation of what Oli called a “Maoist budget” for the new fiscal year.

During their meeting on Monday morning, Oli reportedly urged Dahal to support him by resigning.

“I have had serious talks with Nepali Congress leader Sher Bahadur Deuba about forming a new government to make some changes in the constitution and address some pressing national issues,” Oli was quoted as saying by a UML leader.

According to the UML chairman, Dahal offered Oli the post of prime minister within the current ruling coalition, but Oli politely declined the offer. The UML chairman instead expressed his desire to lead a consensus government, the UML chairman told the Post.

Deuba and Oli held talks through various channels for a month. After several rounds of talks through secret channels and negotiations between the second-tier leaders of the Nepali Congress and the UML, they finally agreed to meet.

According to the two UML leaders who were briefed on the current situation, it is time to form a government based on national consensus to address the country’s daunting challenges.

Prime Minister Dahal had called a meeting of the government partners for Monday at 5 p.m., but the meeting had to be postponed in view of the new situation. Dahal, who was in the process of reshuffling the cabinet, wanted to discuss this at the meeting.