The Brief's Daily Analysis
A lot of people are pinning their hopes on the Maoists calling off their plan to declare ethnic autonomous regions like they did last month. The party recently announced that it was going to push ahead with its previous plan to declare federal states. If the Maoists don't change their minds, we will have federal autonomous regions on 11-18 December, during their third phase of protest.
Chairman of the Constituent Assembly, Subash Nembang, said he had been told that the Maoists had reversed their decision for publicity reasons. Therefore, he said, he was hopeful that Maoists will call off their plan. President Ram Baran Yadav must be keeping his fingers crossed wishing Nembang is right because he is said to be concerned about the plan to divide the country into ethnic zones.
Yadav has been in the news again lately. He has been meeting leaders and assuring them that he will accept whatever decision they make in order to forge a political consensus. Everyone wants the political parties to reach an agreement. Except, perhaps the parties themselves.
They nearly broke into a fight at the CA yesterday after a vote on the system of governance failed to declare a winner. The Maoists said they had won because they had received 18 votes over NC and UML's combined vote of 16. But, Maoists didn't get a majority, said NC and UML leaders. CA members said they were not clear on what the regulations are. Everyone else in the country must be unclear on why they decided to call for a vote if they didn't know how they were going to declare a winner.
This half-baked voting system seems a little like the Maoist plan to declare autonomous region without demarcating the territories. Maoist leader C. P. Gajurel appeared on BBC Nepali today and said that they were going to declare federal states first, and worry about the rest later. Nepal is a country with multi-nationalism, he said, and we ought to recognize that. He also added that their plan to declare autonomous regions was within their rights since no other party seems to agree with them.
The ruling coalition has said from the beginning that they are not happy with the Maoist proposal. But, all the ministers are busy having their blood pressure checked to see if they can fly to Gorakshep for that historic climate change summit. Maybe we can expect them to face these issues when the ice on Mount Everest stops melting.