Leaders from the four major coalition partners -- Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML, Madhesi People´s Rights Forum (MPRF) and Tarai Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP) -- prepared the draft.
The first priority recommended by the panel is building national consensus among the political parties while the second priority is ensuring good governance and rule of law through an end to anarchy, insecurity and impunity. Improvement in the supply system, inflation control, providing relief to the people and a reconstruction program have been given third priority.
Preferences of new government
- Building national consensus among political parties
- Ensuring good governance and rule of law by ending anarchy, insecurity and impunity
- Improving supply system, controlling inflation and providing relief to people
- Taking the peace process to a logical end
- Restructuring the nation through national consensus
- Ensuring rapid economic growth
- Creating a new constitution based on a federal democratic republic
Taking the peace process to a logical end through implementation of past agreements and restructuring the nation on the basis of national consensus are other two priorities.
Bringing about rapid economic growth through the creation of the basis for socio-economic transformation and creating a new constitution based on a federal democratic republic within the stipulated time are also priorities recommended by the panel.
A meeting of the panel held at the parliamentary party office of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) at Singha Durbar Tuesday afternoon gave the draft the final touches.
After that the panel submitted copies of the draft to top leaders of the four parties.
The copies were later distributed at the 22-party meeting held at the prime minister´s office at Singha Durbar.
The 22 parties discussed the priorities during the meeting. All the parties have been recommend to send their feedback by 11 a.m. Wednesday and leaders from the 22 parties are scheduled to sign the CMP at 3 p.m. the same day, said Ram Chandra Poudel, NC vice president, while emerging from the meeting.
The final form is an improvement on the version prepared earlier by UML leaders. Copies of that version were distributed at the 22-party meeting held last week.
The panel renamed some of the programs, other programs have been merged and some items have been added to yet other programs as per the changed political context.
"Integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants will be completed before finalizing the task of writing the new constitution," the panel said. It has proposed making allowances available directly to the Maoist combatants through their individual bank accounts.
The panel has also prepared a draft for forming a high-level Political Coordination Committee. "The committee will be formed from a meeting of the top leaders of the coalition parties," the draft says.
An all-party meeting of 22 political parties called by Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal on Tuesday decided to finalize the Common Minimum Program (CMP) of the new coalition government on Wednesday afternoon.
Prime Minister Nepal called the meeting of the parties which supported him in showing a majority in his favor in parliament while claiming the post of chief executive last month.
22 parties to jointly call for Maoist help
The 22 political parties at the meeting also decided to jointly appeal to the Unified CPN (Maoist) to help prorogue the Legislature-Parliament at the earliest, according to CP Mainali of CPN (ML). The prime minister had earlier said that the current session of the House needed to prorogue at the earliest to make preparations for the coming budget session.
Also, the prime minister requested the major political parties to submit names for induction into the cabinet not later than Wednesday evening. As for the smaller parties, Nepal urged them to come in groups as soon as possible for representation in the cabinet. "I am ready to facilitate talks among the (smaller) parties if needed," Dipak Raj Ghimire of Nepal Family Party quoted the prime minister as saying.
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