Nepal’s UML and Maoists announce alliance, to strive for single left party

Communist Party of Nepal chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Unified Marxist Leninist chief KP Oil. (File)

After days of secret parleys, two biggest communist Parties, Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre, Tuesday announced that they would contest elections to the provincial and federal parliament in alliance. This will be the first step towards forming single Left party in the country.

UML chief K P Oli and Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal made the announcement at a joint press conference asserting that the proposed unification was a “historic necessity solely in the interest of Nepal and its people”.

Baburam Bhattarai, a breakaway Maoist leader and another former Prime Minister, also signed a 7-point agreement released during the press conference as a junior partner in the unity exercise.

The initiative towards the unity injects uncertainty in a politically unstable Nepal, especially to the fate of the four-month-old coalition government led by Nepali Congress chairman Sher Bahadur Deuba with the Maoists as a major partner.

Dahal met Prime Minister Deuba twice – first for an hour, and second time for 25 minutes – to assure that despite the new electoral alliance, the current coalition government will continue till the elections proposed in two phases November 26 and December 7.

The Nepali Congress took the the coalition partner’s move as an act of “deceit” and said it does not augur well for the country and democracy. The party will be assessing the likely outcome and possible next course at a meeting on Wednesday.

Experts were divided over the possibility of a no-trust motion being moved and Deuba replaced by the alliance as the new Prime Minister.