“Rest assured that the sitting chief justice will not be appointed as the prime minister,” Pokharel said while addressing a closed session of the party´s Jhapa district convention on Wednesday. [break]He claimed that the motive behind pushing this proposal was not good and the UCPN (Maoist) leaders are themselves not sincere toward the proposal of a CJ-led government.
Claiming that the ruling Maoist leaders were lobbying for CJ-led government with an intention to weaken the judiciary, Pokharel said that the Maoist leaders came up with the proposal as they believed that the apex court and the Nepal Army were major hindrances in their plan to capture state powers by force.
“The Maoists insisted on forming a CJ-led government but their plan will not be materialize,” said Pokharel.
Pokharel also claimed that the CPN-UML never took a decision to form CJ-led government and the party is still against the proposal.
“The UML has no official decision to form a government under sitting chief justice. It doesn´t make any sense if any particular leader gives a public statement in favor of such proposal as long as the party is officially against it,” he explained. “What the UML said is that the party will play a positive role in ending the deadlock but without making any compromise on separation of powers.”
He also made it clear that Chief Justice Khilraj Regmi can be made prime minister only after he resigns from the post of chief justice. “He can´t hold both the posts as chief justice and the prime minister at the same time. He must resign as chief justice in advance,” he added.
However, the party´s heavyweight KP Sharma Oli claimed that CJ-led government would be formed within a few days. He also said that the new government would hold Constituent Assembly elections by mid-June.
“The CJ-led government will hold elections by mid-June as far as possible. If not, the new government will do it by mid-November,” Oli said at a function organized in Gorkha.
The UML last month remained divided while taking a decision to this effect. While an absolute majority of the party central committee members stood against the decision, the party´s standing committee also remained sharply divided over the matter.
In the standing committee, former Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, General Secretary Pokharel, Secretaries Shankar Pokharel and Yubaraj Gyawali stood against forming CJ-led government while Chairman Jhalanath Khanal, other leaders KP Sharma Oli, Bamdev Gautam, Bidyadevi Bhandari and Bishnu Paudel stood in favor of the proposal.
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