Parties agree on defining nation, state

KATHMANDU: ‘Nepal is a sovereign multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country’ is what the high-level task force today agreed upon after deliberating on definition of ‘nation’ and ‘state’.

The seven-member taskforce — formed on October 11 to narrow down differences on constitutional issues — agreed to replace ‘multi-national’ with ‘multi-ethnic’.

Dev Prasad Gurung of the UCPN-M and Ramesh Lekhak of the Nepali Congress, members of a team of experts assisting the taskforce, said today’s meeting settled 13 contentious issues related to defining ‘nation’ and ‘state’.

Today’s meeting also hammered out an agreement that the constitution ‘will be amended in two ways — either by a two-thirds majority of federal legislature or through a referendum’.

A referendum will be held to amend any Article of the constitution if certain members of the legislature, as specified by the constitution, demand so and the same is approved by a

simple majority of the legislature. The specific Article of the constitution ‘is automatically amended if the referendum endorses the proposal’, said Lekhak.

But the federal legislature must get an approval form the provincial legislature to amend an Article of the constitution if it aims to change the boundary and the jurisdiction of the province. The jurisdictions of the federal government and the provinces are clearly listed in the constitution.

The taskforce meeting, however, could not settle differences on national flag and ‘unchangeable subjects’ of the constitution.

The Maoist leaders said minor changes should be brought in the existing flag while the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and other parties argued that its design and colours should remain unchanged. But they agreed to redefine meanings of its shape and colours in view of the political change the country has gone through.

Gurung said they proposed adding an exact number of rays of sun and moon inscribed in the national flag to symbolise number of provinces and social diversities. The sun in the existing flag has 12 rays and moon has eight, the meaning of which is, however, vague.

The UCPN-Maoist and other parties, especially NC, were at odds over incorporating ‘unchangeable subjects’ in the constitution.

The Maoist party argued that only a few issues — such as sovereignty, republic, federalism and secularism — should be included as ‘unchangeable subjects’. While NC, according to Lekhak, proposed that human rights, rule of law, press freedom, independence of judiciary and pluralism should also be mentioned as ‘unchangeable subjects’.

“We are ready to use a single phrase such as ‘universal values of democracy’ to address all components of democracy,” said Lekhak. But Gurung argued that it would be difficult to amend the constitution in the future if those issues, which were subject to changes in course of time, were treated

as ‘unchangeable’. “The constitution will express its firm commitment to the universal values of democracy elsewhere in the constitution and they are also well-defined by laws. So, they need not be treated as ‘unchangeable subjects’,” said Gurung.

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