House fails to elect new PM

KATHMANDU: The Legislature-Parliament on Wednesday failed to elect the new prime minister.

As two of the three candidates--UCPN-Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Nepali Congress vice president Ram Chandra Paudel--failed to garner a simple majority, and the CPN-UML withdrew its proposal to elect its chairman Jhala Nath Khanal as the new prime minister on 'moral grounds', the House could not take any concrete decision on the prime minister election.

Speaking at the House, Madhav Kumar Nepal, the care taker prime minister who is also a senior UML leader, said that the UML withdrew its proposal as the party failed to garner support of the two-thirds majority in advance.

The UML had fielded its chairman as the prime ministerial candidate conditionally. It had said that Khanal's nomination would be withdrawn if it did not get support from 401 lawmakers before the election.

After the withdrawal of the UML proposal, Speaker Subas Nembang announced that the House was put off till 1 p.m. Friday, July 23.

Now, the Maoist and NC candidates are in the race for the hot seat.

The Constituent Assembly's Business Advisory Committee will decide on the schedule of the run-off election later.

The UML has said that it would eschew from the run-off election. However, the Maoists are expecting that the UML would support their candidate on the moral grounds as they had lent support to Khanal to help him forge support of 401 lawmakers.

Talking to the reporters at the Constituent Assembly this evening, Khanal said that even if he had support from 391 lawmakers he did not vie in the election as he was looking for broad political consensus.

Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal had resigned on June 30 in a bid to break the political impasse and to pave the way for the formation of the national consensus government.

However, the major three parties failed to forge the consensus and fielded their own candidates for the prime minister's election individually.

Source: http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=House+fails+to+elect+new+PM&NewsID=250467