A meeting of the FDRA secretariat held at the residence of alliance chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal at Lazimpat Tuesday, also decided to hold talks with other political forces to expand the alliance. [break]
"The meeting has decided to give responsibility to our alliance chief Prachanda to play the role of coordination and hold talks with other political forces that accept our agenda," said Prem Bahadur Singh, spokesperson of FDRA.
FDRA leaders have been arguing that the alliance is a new force favoring federal states based on ethnic identity. According to the leaders, the political parties in the FDRA are a new force with its new agenda.
"We will try to bring parties into our alliance through talks and discussions," added Singh. According to him, the parties in the alliance will hold their own party meetings within this week to work out their agendas. He also said that the meetings will try to work out a maximum common agenda within the alliance.
"The FDRA meeting, which will be called after this week, will give final shape of all the decisions," added Singh.
The meeting on Tuesday also decided to expand the FDRA in all districts. It will decide through consensus which alliance party will head the alliance in which district.
FDRA was formed to counter the then opposition parties --Nepali Congress and CPN-UML-- when they launched street protests demanding the resignation of the Baburam Bhattarai government.
On Sunday, FDRA had decided to fight the upcoming election as an alliance. Dahal agreed to include the fringe parties, admitting that the big four -- UCPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and United Democratic Madhesi Front (UDMF) -- had made a mistake in not including them in the decision-making process. He expressed a commitment to call them to such meetings in future.
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