Leaders at a meeting convened by CC Chairman Nilamber Acharya on Friday reached the agreement to reactivate the subcommittee and the CC, which is mandated to prepare the integrated draft of the new constitution.[break]
The leaders´ decision has come at a time when they were strongly criticized for their failure to give continuity to the work at the subcommittee and CC as per the new calendar of events. As per the calendar recently endorsed by the Constituent Assembly (CA), the subcommittee meeting should have resumed its work Wednesday.
As per the new calendar, all the remaining disputes in constitution writing -- except for the issues related to state restructuring -- needs to be settled in the next three weeks (by December 30). According to the calendar, the dispute resolution subcommittee, which is headed by UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and represented by top leaders of the major political parties, will settle the disputes and forward it to the CC.
If the subcommittee and the CC fail to settle the disputes, the contentious provisions will then be decided through a vote in the full CA within a period of five days.
CA Chairman Subas Nembang has repeatedly said in public that he will forward the issues for voting in the CA without wasting a single day in the name of forging consensus. “Discussions have already taken a lot of time. It´s high time we took a decision. We have no time to wait any longer,” Nembang said.
The task of preparing the integrated draft of the new constitution has been delayed as the political parties have failed to decide whether they want presidential, prime ministerial, west-ministerial or any other system of governance.
The political parties are also yet to determine the electoral model to be adopted in the new constitution. Another thorny issue is the state restructuring model yet to be settled.
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