[As it transpires, some critical distance - delineating and naming the provinces in particular, remains to be covered. Given the past track records and dissensions among most of the Madhesi parties, that may still prove somewhat tricky. But, the shift in national psyche caused by the devastating earthquake (see, in particular, the write-up at sl. no. III below) and the fact that four major parties, and some sundry others, are now on the same page - more or less, will, hopefully, make things move forward to a successful culmination. Nevertheless let us keep our fingers crossed.]
I/III. http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/nepal-parties-strike-long-awaited-constitution-deal-115060900799_1.html Nepal parties strike long-awaited Constitution deal Press Trust of India | Kathmandu June 9, 2015 Last Updated at 17:48 IST Nepal's warring political parties have struck a landmark 16-point deal to end years of deadlock over contentious issues of Constitution-drafting, agreeing to a parliamentary system and eight provinces, in a rare show of unity following the devastating quakes. Top leaders of the Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML, UCPN (Maoist) and Madhesi People's Rights Forum-Democratic (MPRF-D) agreed to adopt an 8-province federal model, parliamentary system of governance, mixed electoral model and include the provision of a constitutional court for 10 years in the new statute as part of a compromise deal. The deal was struck late last night with an aim to deliver a Constitution within the next few months, according to sources close to the Nepali Congress. The four major political parties that command around 490 seats in the 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA) also secured the support from some other fringe parties including the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), CPN (ML), for the agreement. The pact was a historic one as it will pave the way for the drafting of the new Constitution at the earliest. As per the agreement, the task of delineating provinces will be entrusted to a federal commission to be formed shortly. The parties have announced that a two-thirds majority of the concerned provincial assembly shall name its province. "The government of Nepal shall constitute a federal commission and it will be entrusted with the task of delineating the provinces," the 16-point agreement stated. "After receiving the report of the commission, the two-thirds majority of the legislature-Parliament shall take final decision on delineation," it said. The commission will have given six-month tenure. There shall be a bicameral Parliament at the centre with a 275-member Lower House and a 45-member Upper House. Of the total 275 members of the Lower House, 165 will be elected through direct voting under the first-past-the-post (FPTP) system and other 110 members will be elected under the proportional representation (PR) system, the agreement states. This means there will be 60 per cent directly elected members and 40 per cent members elected through proportional representation in the Lower House. The Upper House shall have 40 members elected from all the provinces while five will be nominated by the federal Cabinet. A parliamentary system of governance will be adopted with a ceremonial President as the head of state and an executive Prime Minister as the head of government, the agreement said. The agreement came a month after deadly earthquakes left a trail of death and destruction in Nepal with nearly 9,000 people killed and scores injured in the country's worst natural disaster. Analysts said the move by the politicians may have been prompted by the criticism they received for their response to the disaster. II/III. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/world/asia/earthquake-prods-nepal-parties-to-make-constitution-deal.html?_r=0 Earthquake Prods Nepal Parties to Make Constitution Deal By BHADRA SHARMA and ELLEN BARRYJUNE 8, 2015 KATHMANDU, Nepal — After almost a decade of friction over central constitutional issues, Nepal’s major political parties reached an accord on Monday night, agreeing to a federal model with eight provinces that would allow them to form a government involving all major parties and rebuild the quake-ravaged nation. The compromise, propelled by the urgency to begin reconstruction, left some important issues unaddressed. The eight provinces have not been named, and their boundaries have not been determined, leaving unclear how much power will accrue to small, marginalized ethnic groups. While Nepal’s four largest parties have agreed to the compromise, smaller opposition parties still oppose it, and will try to mobilize protests in the coming days, said Prashant Jha, the author of “Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal.” “It will mean that the constitution is contested from Day 1, it will be burned on the day it is promulgated,” said Mr. Jha, who is also a journalist at The Hindustan Times. “I don’t think the constitution, according to the deal that was struck today, can last as it is. There will have to be an accommodation of the other forces that opposed it today.” Nevertheless, political leaders hailed the deal as historic. The compromise cleared the way for elections of village, municipal and district government bodies, which have been functioning without elected representatives for more than a decade. “The constitutional deadlock has now ended,” said Narayan Kaji Shrestha, vice chairman of the Maoist party. “We will now focus on rebuilding.” The deal comes after seven years of tortuous negotiation. In 2006, Nepal’s Maoist rebels agreed to put down their arms and join a democratic political process. Two years after that, the Constituent Assembly was elected to a two-year term, but that term was extended again and again after rival parties failed to cut a deal on a new constitution, disagreeing on how to demarcate the country into smaller political units. Kanak Mani Dixit, the founding editor of Himal Southasian magazine and a prominent political commentator, said the decision to put off the most vexing problems — the mapping and naming of the new provinces — meant Monday’s deal fell short of a breakthrough. “If this will get us ahead on a road to a constitution which will give us a modicum of political stability for reconstruction, well, this is probably the best we could ask for,” he said. He added, “This has left us in a kind of suspended animation.” The pact agreed to on Monday will be passed on to committees in the Constituent Assembly to be formalized and drafted. The Assembly will open a process for public comment, and then vote on the draft. K. P. Sharma Oli, chairman of the country’s largest communist party, said the vote could come as soon as mid-July. After that, a federal commission would take up the task of mapping the provinces, a process that could last years. As part of the agreement, the four parties agreed to adopt a mixed electoral model, in which the lower house of Parliament would have 60 percent of its seats elected directly with the rest elected through a proportional electoral system. The former Maoist rebels dropped their longstanding demand for a directly elected president, and agreed to a parliamentary system. “The earthquake was a big trigger,” Mr. Jha said. “On one hand, it generated pressure to the parties to come to a deal. On the other hand, it provided a pretext for those who wanted a certain kind of constitution to push it, because the opposition was not able to push for a movement in favor of federalism.” Correction: June 9, 2015 Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article included an incorrect reference to a Nepalese politician, K. P. Sharma Oli. He is the chairman of Nepal’s largest communist party, not its largest Maoist party. III. http://www.ekantipur.com/2015/06/10/top-story/a-combination-of-factors-made-4-party-deal-possible/406359.html A combination of factors made 4-party deal possible But a lot remains to be done to translate the 16-point pact into a successful constitution - AKHILESH UPADHYAY KATHMANDU, JUN 10 - The four-party agreement on the eight-province model on late Monday night came as a pleasant surprise to Nepalis. After two massive earthquakes, 8,778 deaths, more than 22,000 injured and half a million homes destroyed, the last six weeks have clearly been one of the most harrowing periods in Nepal’s modern history. But the disaster has also brought us together in ways unknown. The sense of national duty that young Nepalis have shown is perhaps the biggest story of the Great Earthquake. They were the last ones to complain about the non-performing political class and the first ones to respond to the national crisis. The political class must have taken some cues from that. The groundswell of driven Nepalis--students, soldiers, policemen, doctors, civil servants, women’s groups--can behumbling to anyone. The Nepal Army was seen as the most organised force in terms of being prepared to conduct relief and rescue works. The dominant narrative the last one month in these highly-charged times has been mostly non-political. The everyday conversations now are not about bashing politicians but worrying about the next Big One, about when and if it will occur. (The most frequently asked question at our newspaper office every morning is: Did you feel the tremors last night?) Against this backdrop, the political parties and individual politicians pulled themselves together in the last few days to make the eight-province deal possible. Prime Minister and Nepali Congress (NC) President Sushil Koirala chaired perhaps the longest (it lasted for six hours), and certainly the most important, political gathering of his tenure last night, two days after he ran around like a young man in a charity football match organised to raise funds for the earthquake victims. Did the reluctant PM finally crack the whip and make use of his bully pulpit? His deputy in the NC, Ram Chandra Poudel, has been averse to political flexibility, rigidly sticking to a six-province model. Poudel did so again during and after the four-party deal. So did CPN-UML leader and former PM Madhav Kumar Nepal, though he led us to believe that he is willing to change his position if that makes the new constitution possible. Should the new constitution materialise, Koirala will leave behind a great political legacy. Nepalis will forgive him for his lacklustre showing in office, in the constitution -making process and, not least, for the lack of statesmanship at a time of the most devastating natural disaster in the country’s living memory. Other major actors Like it or not, CPN-UML Chairman KP Oli has emerged as a key political player after the 2013 elections. He said last night after the deal: “I didn’t take a position. I wanted the constitution .” The NC might have emerged as the largest party, but the UML is not too far behind, and this has left the once-powerful UCPN (Maoist) struggling for its political existence and in doubt of its direction. Oli most certainly has also been motivated by his own personal ambitions. If Sushil Koirala will get to lay claim to the lasting legacy of a successful constitution al project, Oli is strongly driven to occupy Baluwatar, not least because of his failing health. As for UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, another signatory to the four-party deal, his party has been in deep introspection since its loss in the 2013 elections, which pushed it to a distant third place from the pole position. The NC-UML coalition has hurt the Maoists on two fronts. One, the Koirala-led government has increasingly sidelined the once-dominant party from the patronage networks at the disposal of the state; two, and unsurprisingly, politics has moved back to the centre-right, squeezing the political space the Maoist party had controlled before the elections. As for the fourth signatory to the agreement last night, MJF-Loktantrik’s Bijaya Gachhadar, he found that was more important for him to adopt the politics of compromise to ensure political longevity, than to project himself as the champion of the Madhesi cause. He now remains, in all probability, isolated from all other Madhesi and Janajati parties who have kept out of the four-party deal and who had insisted that both the names of the eight provinces and their delineation be finalised as a precondition to the political deal. With the UCPN (Maoist) and Gachhadar supporting the deal, the 30-party opposition alliance has now become one of 28 parties. That brings us to the biggest political question about the16-point agreement. Yes, the NC-UML-Maoist-MJF (Lokantrik) alliance has a clear two-thirds majority required to promulgate the constitution , but anyone who stands in favour of the constitution would not want the Madhesi/Janajati constituency to spiral out of control. If anything, the monsoon historically has hardly been the time for big unrests in Nepal, and the four-party alliance have time on their side to ‘sell’ the deal. But it is very important that the 28 parties that are left out in the cold are treated with the sensitivity they deserve. Earthquake as political watershed This scribe was asked by at least half a dozen top political leaders after the April 25 earthquake: “Why has the media decided to banish us from coverage?” Indeed, in the early days after the Great Earthquake, the newspapers, TV and radio programmes did evict the party leaders from their news. The politicians were also at the receiving end from an increasingly vociferous social media, where ordinary Nepalis vented their ire and disappointment at the political class, not least the government--a message that was not lost on the parties. In an interview with this correspondent last week, Maoist leader and former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai said, “The political parties risk irrelevance if we continue to fail to embody the aspirations of the young and the educated.” He was commenting on the public response to the political class after the Great Earthquake. What next? With the agreement on Monday night, the parties have rekindled some of the lost hope and they have deservingly taken back the centre stage. But will they go all the way and deliver a constitution , an enduring one at that? Only time will tell. Monday night’s developments have made Nepalis more hopeful: even though the constitution remains a work in progress, the parties do seem keen to deliver on the unfinished project. Posted on: 2015-06-10 08:07 -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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