They said the 12-point agreement signed between the then seven party alliance and the Maoists, Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) and the interim constitution should be the key documents of reference while drafting the new constitution.
Vice Chairman of UCPN (Maoist) Dr Baburam Bhattarai, Vice President of Nepali Congress Ram Chandra Poudel, Home Minister Bhim Rawal and Finance Minister Surendra Pandey representing the CPN-UML, agreed on the idea at the Constitutional Committee meeting on Thursday.
“We have made major agreements while signing 12-point agreement, the CPA and the interim constitution,” Bhattarai said, adding, “We should not deviate from the major principles that we agreed to while signing these historic documents.” He claimed that democracy, republicanism and federal set up are the issues that were already agreed to by the political parties.
Pluralism versus multiparty competitive politics
In the meeting, Bhattarai proposed that the world ´pluralism´ be removed from the preamble while describing Nepali society. A draft text prepared by the committee members has proposed “pluralistic open society” instead.
Bhattarai argued that the word ´pluralistic´ was redundant as “the parties have already agreed on competitive multiparty democracy”. He said that the term “pluralism” needed further explanation as it has a broad philosophical connotation.
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