Negotiators to continue with consultations over interim constitution

Even though they have missed the timeline fixed by November 8 agreement, the government and the Maoist negotiators have intensified their consultations over finalizing the interim constitution, which must be readied before the interim parliament and the interim cabinet can be formed.

As per the November 8 agreement, the interim constitution should have been finalized on November 26 leading to the formation of interim cabinet by December 1. However, the protracted negotiations over the tripartite agreement on the management of arms and armies have pushed these timelines.

A day after they sealed the arms accord, the government talks team members and the Maoist talks team members sat down on Wednesday for preliminary deliberations over the interim constitution.

According to government talks team coordinator and Home Minister Krishna Sitaula, the negotiators have now started serious deliberations over the interim constitution.

The negotiators are discussing to "complete" the draft of the interim constitution, which was submitted by the Interim Constitution Drafting Committee (ICDC) on August 25. The ICDC had submitted a skeleton draft after it failed to receive common position on important issues such as the status of monarchy, structure of state, interim parliament and so on from the political parties.

The ICDC headed by former Supreme Court judge Laxman Aryal had taken one and a half month to come up with the draft constitution with 26 parts and 172 Articles. The 16-member committee had taken 68 days to write the incomplete draft even though it was first asked to do so in 15 days. It had left most other contentious political issues to be sorted out by the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists.

However, with the completion of November 8 agreement and the November 21 Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA), many such issues have already been settled.

"We will complete the interim constitution based on the guidelines given by the November 8 agreement and the CPA," said Pradip Gyawali, a member of the government talks team.

The agreements have already decided to determine the fate of monarchy by the first meeting of Constituent Assembly and to hold the CA elections based on mixed electoral system. On Wednesday, the negotiators discussed about the framework of the interim constitution. They have claimed that they would begin Article-wise discussion from Thursday and complete the document within three days. nepalnews.com sd Nov 30 06