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Kathmandu Tuesday October 24, 2000 Kartik 08, 2057.
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Cabinet reshuffle unlikely before
Tihar
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Oct 23 - A day after forcing Prime
Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to bow down, his opponents in the Nepali Congress (NC)
today decided that they would not join the Koirala government unless Sunday’s
agreements are implemented.
Sunday’s meeting of the Central Working
Committee (CWC) had decided to renew the membership of all the active members of the
party, with the exception of few involved in anti-party activities, following pressure
from the anti-Koirala camp led by Krishna Prasad Bhattarai.
The rebel members led by Sher Bahadur Deuba met
today to discuss Sunday’s CWC decision and decided that unless Koirala
"sincerely implements" the decision they would not give in the names to be
included in the Cabinet.
For the past two weeks, Koirala has been seeking a
list of names from Bhattarai that are to be inducted in the Cabinet.
However, the Bhattarai side has been refusing to do
so until the issue of renewal of active membership was solved. On Sunday, the CWC decided
to renew the active membership of all the NC members whose names had been posted in the
list published in 1995.
The meeting decided on the 907 applications filed
claiming mistakes and omission in the list of active members published few weeks back.
With the exception of the NC activists who had
decided to contest as rebel candidates during election or supported them, the remaining
members whose names had been on the 1995 would get their membership renewed.
This meant that another 2,000 members would be
added to the list of nearly 105,000 members. These members will soon elect 1,500 members
to the General Convention during NC’s District Conventions.
The general convention members will be electing
party officials including the party president.
The anti-Koirala camp has been accusing the Koirala
camp of using their domination on the party office to add new members against the
agreement between the two factions in the party and barring supporters of the rebel camp
from getting their membership renewed. Though the two factions agreed to a truce over the
weekend, the much awaited reshuffle in the cabinet is not likely to happen before Tihar,
sources close to Prime Minister Koirala said.
The reshuffle in the cabinet to include equal
number of people from the anti-Koirala in the party was agreed in August after over four
dozen NC lawmakers rebelled against him and threatened to oust him from office.
"The path has been cleared since the agreement
at Sunday’s Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting, however, the reshuffle in the
cabinet is less likely to happen before the Tihar festival," said the source.
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