Nepal Maoist Top Gun warns to die en masse in Parliament

KATHMANDU: Baburam Bhattarai, former Prime Minister of Nepal and senior leader of UCPN Maoist, has warned that around two hundred pro-identity Constituent Assembly (CA) members are ready to die within the CA if the new constitution is drafted through forceful implementation of majority based voting.

The former Maoist rebel issued such a threat amid recent initiatives of ruling parties – Nepali Congress and CPN – UML – to resolve contentious issues in the new constitution – that among others include the restructuring of the state and form of governance. NC, CPN UML and other ruling coalition parties have been pressing to testify the contentious issues through majority based voting. However, the UCPN Maoist and other political parties, whose main agenda have been identity based federalism, has been slamming the idea.

Speaking at an interaction program in Kathmandu on Sunday, Bhattarai said, ” if anti-identity parties try to suppress the pro-identity parties, we are even ready to die within the Constituent Assembly. He even claimed that “they ( pro- identity federalism supporting parties) would not back off from their agenda, even if the condition of spilling blood arose.”

Elaborating on the issue further, he claimed that the model of federalism forwarded by Nepali Congress and CPN UML is ‘ethnic’, that had the domination of khas and aryas and added that their model of federalism was not singular ethnic identity based.

“Its not singular identity based. Terming the proposal to divide and allocate state resources and materials to marginalized communities as singular identity based model is in itself a political betrayal,” Bhaatarai said.

With the January 22, 2015 deadline to promulgate the new constitution inching in, Nepal’s political parties and its second edition of the Constituent Assembly, is yet to garner consensus on contentious issues that had forced the Bhattarai led government to dissolve the first edition of CA in 2012.