New Delhi: The Leftist coalition government led by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre (CPN-Maoist Centre) fell on Friday after failing a floor test in the House of Representatives of the Himalayan nation’s Parliament, a new coalition government comprising the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Nepali Congress is set to assume power.
This will be the 14th government to take power since the end of the monarchy in Nepal in 2008. This is the culmination of a series of political developments since the end of June and the beginning of this month. Sher Bahadur Deuba, former Prime Minister and president of the Nepali Congress, and KP Sharma Oli, also a former Prime Minister and leader of the CPN-UML, signed an agreement on the intervening night of July 1 and 2 to form a new coalition government in Kathmandu. According to the deal, Oli, and then Deuba, will serve as Prime Ministers on a rotational basis during the three-and-a-half-year tenure left of the present government.
Following this, the CPN-UML asked Dahal to step down from office on July 3 as per Article 76 (2) of the country's constitution. According to Article 76 (2), the President shall appoint as the Prime Minister a member of the House, who can command a majority with the support of two or more parties.
However, a meeting of office-bearers of the CPN-Maoist Centre decided that Dahal would not step down and instead go for a vote of confidence in the House of Representatives. According to Article 100 (2) of the constitution, if the political party the Prime Minister represents is divided or a political party in the coalition withdraws its support, the Prime Minister shall table a motion in the House of Representatives for a vote of confidence within 30 days. This gave Dahal just a month more to continue in office. However, Dahal opted to go for a floor test as early as July 12, much ahead of the 30-day deadline he had in hand. This was the fifth-floor test that Dahal opted to go for since he became Prime Minister in December 2022.
It is worth mentioning that the Nepali Congress was earlier part of the Dahal-led coalition at the Centre. However, in March this year, the CPN-Maoist Centre severed all ties with the Nepali Congress and invited the CPN-UML to join the coalition. The other initial partners in this new coalition were the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP). However, the Janata Samajbadi Party withdrew support to the coalition in May this year citing differences with the CPN-Maoist Centre.
Meanwhile, both Dahal and Oli were reportedly unhappy with the new arrangement. Dahal was cited as acknowledging that the current ad hoc politics in the country was unsustainable and stating that he could do precious little but keep shuffling ministers. That Oli, too, was not satisfied with the arrangement became evident when he described the annual budget presented by the government as a "Maoist budget".
All this led to mistrust between the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre. According to Pradeep Gyawali, deputy general secretary of the CPN-UML, Dahal was in touch with the Nepali Congress for over the last month or so to form a national consensus government. This became a major cause of mistrust between the CPN-UML and the CPN-Maoist Centre. However, when the Nepali Congress rejected Dahal's proposal, the CPN-UML decided to take things into its own hands.
“The UML and the Congress started talking and decided to move ahead together for political stability and democratic exercise,” a Kathmandu Post report quoted Gyawali as saying. On June 29, Oli and Deuba held a closed-door meeting. On July 1, Oli held a separate meeting with Dahal. Following this, Oli and Deuba sealed the deal.
In Friday’s floor test, only 63 lawmakers voted in Dahal’s favour while 194 voted against with one abstaining in the 275-member Lower House of Parliament.
This will be the first time that Deuba and Oli will be forming a coalition government though both had led the national consensus government in 2015 for the adoption of the country’s new constitution. Given Nepal’s fluid political landscape, questions arise about the sustainability of such a government as the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML are ideologically different parties.
According to local media reports, there are already differences between the two parties regarding the allocation of portfolios in the new government. Oli, who is set to become the Prime Minister, is reluctant to appoint a Deputy Prime Minister, a report in the Post stated. According to the agreement reached by the two sides, the Nepali Congress will get 11 ministries and the CPN-UML 10. While the Nepali Congress is supposed to get the Home and Foreign Ministries, the CPN-UML will hold the Finance and Defence portfolios. However, with several other parties extending support to the new coalition government coupled with the issue of the appointment of a Deputy Prime Minister, portfolio allocation is turning out to be a challenge already.
“The new coalition government is a combination of individual and party interests,” Nihar R Nayak, Research Fellow at the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses and an expert on issues about Nepal, told ETV Bharat.
According to Nayak, the formation of the new government will see the end of the tenure of Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister Rabi Lamichhane of the Rashtriya Swatantra Party, which was a part of the outgoing coalition government. Lamichhane was trying to open some corruption cases allegedly involving the Nepali Congress.
On the other hand, Oli, by becoming the Prime Minister, can check the rise of former President Bidya Devi Bhandari, who is leading a faction within the CPN-UML against him.
“Once he becomes the Prime Minister, Oli can effectively check the rise of Bhandari,” Nayak said. Bhandari, it is worth mentioning, has a pro-China stand.
The ouster of the Dahal government will also see the exit of Barsha Man Pun of the CPN-Maoist Centre as the country’s Finance Minister. Pun is one person who has been pushing for the implementation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s pet Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects in Nepal.
Implementation of BRI projects in Nepal would have gone against the interests of both India and the US, Nayak pointed out. India is Nepal’s biggest development aid partner and New Delhi and Kathmandu have a wide bilateral cooperation agenda. “Hence, the fall of the Dahal government, in a way, has also served the interests of some external forces,” Nayak said.
Read more: Nepal PM Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda' Loses Vote Of Confidence In Parliament
