(Update with details at 2045 NST, 1600 GMT)
TU senate meeting postponed, next meeting undecided
KATHMANDU, April 23: A scheduled meeting of the parliament was postponed on Thursday, even without entering into formal business, for the third time in a row over the issue of ruling Maoists trying to sack army chief Rookmangud Katawal.
Speaker Subas Nembang has called the next meeting at 3pm on Sunday, after opposition party lawmakers picketed the Speaker´s rostrum demanding a complete withdrawal of government´s action initiated against the army chief. [break]
A leader of the main opposition Nepali Congress (NC), Bimalendra Nidhi, told the House that his party was going to boycott the meeting as the government hasn’t shown any sign of retracting initiation of action against Katawal despite commitments from Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to do so.
Soon after the NC lawmakers started walking out of the House chanting anti-Maoist slogans, they were joined by some lawmakers from the ruling CPN-UML and opposition Tarai-Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP). In their response to the NC sloganeering, Maoist lawmakers too rose from their seats and chanted anti-NC slogans.
Speaking at the meeting, Nidhi accused the Maoists of trying to derail the army integration process so that they could use their combatants in the next elections. "What can be more ridiculous when a party which is yet to transform itself into a civilian party and the leader of which fought the election as the head of a militant group claims to be fighting for the civilian supremacy?" he asked.
Opposition lawmakers Dr Prakash Chandra Lohani of Rastriya Janashakti Party, Pratibha Rana of Rastriya Prajatantra Party, Chandra Bahadur Gurung of Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal and Santa Bahadur Nepali of Rastriya Janamorcha also flayed the government for trying to drag the army into controversy. They also accused the Maoists of trying to impose dictatorship by controlling all state organs.
TMDP lawmaker Jitendra Sonal said the Maoists were trying to establish one man´s supremacy over the army and the whole society in the name of fighting for civilian supremacy.
Earlier, Maoist deputy leader in the parliament Narayan Kaji Shrestha said the government action against the army chief came as an attempt to establish civilian supremacy, not as a part of the Maoists´ strategy to capture state organs.
He claimed that the issue of action against the army chief had increased foreign intervention in Nepal´s affairs. Lohani, Gurung and Nepali, however, claimed it was the Maoists who invited direct intervention of foreign forces in Nepal´s affairs.
