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| Kathmandu, Thursday January 02, 2003 Paush 18, 2059. |
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Oli guns for Nepal
By Ghanashyam Ojha
KATHMANDU, Jan 1 K P Sharma Oli, an influential
leader of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist & Leninist (CPN- UML), has
asked party general secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal to get out of the race for the leadership
of the party.
Talking to The Kathmandu Post, Oli said Nepal
shouldn’t hanker for the post after leading the party for two consecutive terms.
"Nepal’s leadership has been tested for past ten years and he has delivered what
he could do best," Oli said adding that it is high time to evaluate the new
leadership.
"Nepal should not feel humiliated nor
harbour any such grievances but should democratically step down from the party
leadership," Oli further added. Asked whether he was interested in replacing Nepal,
Oli said that it was upto the conference. "But the time for a change in leadership
has been urgently felt," Oli said.
He also charged Nepal of harbouring autocratic
system in the party. "No one should remain in the leadership for more than two
consecutive periods, it is an autocratic system," Oli said.
A dissident group, led by the party’s
powerful leaders Oli, Bam Dev Gautam and Mod Nath Prasrit, has been urging for internal
democratisation of the party, along with a change in the national and international
political situation. They are in favour of a presidential system and are proposing for the
election of the central committee including party president and general secretary by the
general conference.
However, another coterie of the party leaders
led by party supremo general secretary Nepal is still in favour general secretarial
system. They opine that the conference should elect only the central committee, which
would later select party general secretary, as per the system in a communist party.
Talking about the worse consequences of the
previous system of electing only central committee by the conference, Oli said that many
of the major leaders in the party were removed in the past, owing to their minority
position. "The leaders should not be removed by quantity but by quality," Oli
said, adding, "and such practice should be discouraged by the party leadership."
He stressed that the party statute should be
amended, with a clause put in that no one should remain in the party leadership for more
than two consecutive terms. "It is a democratic system everybody in the party should
agree with," Oli said.
Similarly, Prasrit opined that the general
secretary should share power with president. "General secretary should not remain
burdened with responsibilities. Some of them should be handed over to the president,"
Prasrit said. "I also support the presidential system."
A member of the party Standing Committee said
that the party leadership was suffering from the communist traditional dogmas and never
allowed democracy within the party. "The party leadership must let loose democracy
within the party before entering into the democratic system," he said. "It’s
the party leadership which wants power centred in himself."
"The party should not be so rigid with its
dogmatic ideals," he said flaying the ideas as put forward by Nepal. "The party
has been taking part in elections in a democratic manner and it has completely turned a
democratic party for the past few years but the leadership still talks of the age-old
communist system," he said.
The party standing committee meeting today could
not come to a consensus on the organisational and political paper presented by Nepal and
the party statutory amendment paper presented by Amrit Kumar Bohara, chief of the party’s
Union Department, as the leaders had divergent opinions on those papers. Oli made it clear
that these proposals would be presented at the central committee meeting on Thursday, as
no one could come to a consensus over them and everything would be decided at the seventh
party conference in Janakpur. "It’s the general conference which will take
decisions over these issues and no one should try to be high handed in the party,"
Oli said.
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