Leaders for CA to learn from earlier experience

KATHMANDU, NOV 30 -

As the new Constituent Assembly is taking shape, there are words of caution for the elected body to be effective. Second-rung leaders who were involved in core negotiations in the last CA have suggested lessons from the previous experience.

These include more involvement of senior leaders at the committee level, improving regulations governing various thematic committees to avoid duplication and an effective drafting committee.

Other suggestions include making the CA proceedings more effective and not repeat the tendency to boycott the elected body to reach an agreement on contentious issues. One of the major criticisms of the last CA was that crucial negotiations were taking place outside it.

The absence of senior leaders in the CA proceedings is believed to have hampered its effective functioning. Some of the prominent names in the list of absentees included UCPN (Maoist) 

Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Nepali Congress senior leader Sher Bahadur Deuba.

CPN-UML leader and former lawmaker Agni Kharel calls for thematic committees to be headed by senior leaders of major parties. 

“This will give weight to the working of the committee. And there should be attempts to settle all the issues dealt by the respective committees there itself. Last time around, senior leaders behaved as if heading a thematic committee would be an insult,” said Kharel. He also added that in the last 

CA it was found that not all the members of a committee had adequate understanding of the issues being dealt by it.

Others call for an effective drafting committee in addition to improving regulations governing various thematic committees to avoid duplication. Sadbhawana Party Co-chairman Laxman Lal Karna, who was another prominent leader involved in the CA proceedings, maintains that the drafting committee had been large. 

As for reviewing the CA procedure, Karna is in favour of instituting provisions for creating necessary mechanisms. “In the last Constituent Assembly , questions were raised over constituting a dispute resolution sub-committee. This time around, there should be clear provisions,” he remarked.

There are also suggestions that constitution-writing will be smooth given that major parties have similar positions now. 

“This time we don’t have a situation in which a party is largest and is far ahead of those in the second and third positions. This facilitates the drafting of the constitution,” said Nilamber Acharya, chairperson of the constitutional committee of the last CA that was entrusted with statute-drafting.

In the last CA, the UCPN (Maoist), the largest party, secured 237 seats followed by the Nepali Congress with 113 and the UML with 109. 

This time around, the NC, the largest party, is expected to hold 196 seats, followed by 175 of the UML. The Maoists are a distant third with 80 seats.