The NC top leaders were busy holding their own parliamentary party meeting and could not attend the meeting, which was supposed to discuss the deadlock over annual budget and appointments in the constitutional bodies as well as the issues related to the peace process and constitution-drafting.[break]
The leaders have agreed to hold another meeting on Wednesday.
Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal said the leaders discussed contemporary political scenario and agreed to hold in-depth discussions on Wednesday and take decisions.
“The prime minister called a meeting today accepting my suggestion during the taskforce meeting Monday that we hold talks to deliberate on all the issues related to the political deadlock. But we could not dwell on the issues in the spirit we had done on Monday as the NC leaders were absent,” said Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal after the meeting at Singha Durbar.
During the meeting, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, Maoist Chairman Dahal, NC leader Ram Sharan Mahat and UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal put forward their views.
Nepal stated that the country cannot leave the constitutional bodies vacant and the budget in limbo just because the new government has not been formed yet. “You should not disrupt the government activities while waiting for the formation of a new government; you must cooperate to solve the country´s problems,” NC leader Mahat quoted the prime minister as saying. Nepal called for cooperation from the parties to run the government.
Mahat said the leaders agreed to reach an agreement in a package. “We only held preliminary talks. The leaders will hold in-depth meetings on Wednesday,” he said.
The meeting mainly focused on the appointments at the constitutional bodies and the budget deadlock. Finance Minister Surendra Pandey briefed the meeting about the dire consequences if the budget is not endorsed by mid-November.
Maoists are vehemently opposing the government move to table the annual budget as well as the policy and programs, saying the caretaker government doesn´t have any right to do so.
On the issue of appointment in the constitutional bodies, Dahal said the caretaker government should not make any such appointment without reaching consensus on other contentious issues.
In his capacity as the leader of the main opposition, Dahal is a member of the Constitutional Council (CC), the body responsible for making appointments in constitutional bodies. He has so far refused to attend the CC meeting, leaving it in a virtually defunct state.
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