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VOL. 28, NO. 22, Feb 20, 2009 (Falgun 09 2065)
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Heading For Consensus
Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and other fringe parties seem to be close to consensus on parliamentary forms of government in constitution
By A CORRESPONDENT
At a time when some of the major political parties including CPN-Maoist and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum and some leaders of Nepali Congress are proposing direct elected executive for the country arguing that the parliamentary forms of government failed in Nepal, the leaders of three major political parties Nepali Congress president Girija Prasad Koirala, CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal and former prime minister Surya Bahadur Thapa proposed the parliamentary forms of government like that of India.
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Political Leaders: Heading For Consensus |
At a program organized by Society for Constitutional and Parliamentary Exercises (SCOPE), on Views of the Political Parties on Key Constitutional Issues Related to the New Constitution, political leaders expressed the views that the new constitution need to accept the parliamentary forms of government.
"As we have five decades long experiences of parliamentary forms of government, we need to continue it in new constitution," said former prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala. "The new constitution must guarantee press freedom, multi-party parliamentary government, and sovereignty to the people, independent of judiciary and human rights."
CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal, too, holds similar view. "The new constitution must include the system of accountable parliamentary government, independence of judiciary, periodic multi-party elections, guarantee of human rights and press freedom, "said Nepal. "These are the mandate of the people and we will not accept any proposal that will curtail the rights of the people," said Nepal.
Former prime minister and RJP leader Surya Bahadur Thapa also sided with Koirala and Nepal. "Our party also proposes the parliamentary form of government, free press, human rights and independence of judiciary in the new constitution," he said. "Other forms of government will bring new form of totalitarian."
However, CPN-Maoist and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum opposed the parliamentary forms of government."The old system is rejected by people. Thus, we need elected executive president," said CPN-Maoist leader Dinanath Sharma.
Similarly, MJF leader Syamananda Suman also said that for the political stability, the executive presidential system is the best. "Our party has already proposed the executive president with autonomous federation," said Suman.
Although there are divergent views, MJF and Maoists do not have clear stand against the parliamentary forms of government.
"Political parties advocating presidential form of government have not been able to present sufficient ground against parliamentary forms of government which is based on concept of accountability and pluralism. Moreover, this is the system which almost all people of the country are familiar with in the last five decades," said eminent constitutional lawyer Dr. Surya Dhungel.
"Since we have more than five decades long experiences and practice of parliamentary forms of government, I cannot imagine to see forms of government other than parliamentary system," said Koirala.
"First the political parties must decide for which political system they are going to draft the constitution. Is it going to be liberal democracy as professed by NC and other parties or based on Maoist radical communist philosophy. First they need to decide the name of the game, and then only can they frame the rule of the game," said senior advocate and chairman of SCOPE Badri Bahadur Karki. "Next question is the form of the government. Is it going to be a presidential form of government or parliamentary form of government? Major political parties first must decide about the system of government."
Although Nepal's experts have been citing the example of South African model and other European models, which are yet to prove to be successful, Indian model of parliamentary forms of government, which has been successfully providing stable democratic government and economic prosperity is nobody's agenda.
In the last sixty years, India continued to practice the parliamentary forms of government with periodic elections and accountable government. "Nepal must learn from successful experiments of parliamentary forms of government with stable government of India," said a commentator.
