Stating that state restructuring would be a major agenda in the coming election, UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal said his party would strongly advocate for a multiple-identity-based federal system. [break]
“We can´t find a single village with an exclusive presence of a single ethnic community across the country. So the proposal to delineate single-ethnic-identity based provinces can´t fit in our context,” Khanal said while addressing a gathering held at the party headquarters at Balkhu on Friday. “There is co-existence among various ethnic communities. Any model that disturbs the harmony is unacceptable.”
He also rejected the proposal to delineate provinces on the basis of language. “We have more than 100 languages and we can´t create states based on only some major languages because such a move would establish their hegemony,” said Khanal.
He said institutionalizing the federal democratic system, strengthening national sovereignty and owning and safeguarding the works done by the dissolved Constituent Assembly (CA) were the party´s election agenda.
“Similarly, a democracy with social justice and economic prosperity are our priority at this stage,” he said.Senior party leader Madhav Kumar Nepal instructed the cadres to strongly counter wrong issues lobbied by UCPN (Maoist) such as ethnicity-based federalism.
Nepal said the party members, during the election campaign, should expose “UCPN (Maoist) leaders´ tendency of backtracking from political agreements” as the major reason behind the failure of the dissolved CA.
“Had the UCPN (Maoist) leaders agreed to implement the political agreements just two weeks before the CA was dissolved, the CA would certainly have produced a new constitution,” said Nepal. “The Madhes-based parties also abetted the Maoists in making the CA a failure.”
He suggested to the party members to tell the voters that UCPN (Maoist) had dissolved the CA by provoking various ethnic communities in favor of ethnicity-based federalism and for preferential political rights.
Another leader KP Sharma Oli instructed party members to seek people´s support for peace, social justice and economic prosperity and to make it clear that the violence would be counterproductive.
“Nepali people have already suffered a lot in the name of people´s war and revolution. Now they want peace and stability,” he said.
Meanwhile, publisher of Rajdhani vernacular daily, Mahendra Sherchan, joined the UML at the same function. The three leaders -- Khanal, Nepal and Oli -- jointly welcomed him to the party. “I decided to join UML because I found this party firmly standing in favor of press freedom and democracy. I am also impressed by the party´s policy of multiple-ethnicity-based federalism,” he said while addressing the function.
The party leaders also launched an online portal of the party www.ratosurya.com <http://www.ratosurya.com> with a plan to make its publicity campaign more effective.
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