Kathmandu: Public discussions continue to stand around the issue of the revival of the parliament in the absence of any other public standpoint among the major political parties. The latest to raise this issue is none other than Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s own “democratic congress”.

Not lost in the discussions is the public awareness of the why’s of the discussion in his central committee. Deuba’s party has members who can bargain with the mainstream Girija congress if the dissolved parliament is restored to bring Deuba down in the bargain for a cabinet berth. This is precisely why Deuba dissolved the parliament hastily in anticipation of a no-confidence motion to be jointly submitted by the UML and the congress.

Only last week, similar concerns dominated the UML central committee sessions. The UML meeting emerged from demands of better performance by government with the stick of parliamentary revival. Both the congress-democratic and the UML, remarkably, had members not in the cabinet as government’s biggest critic and outspoken spokesperson of parliamentary revival. It is precisely this fluid thirst for cabinet berths that contributed to the dissolution of the parliament.

Lost in this clamor and the many justifications placed for the revival of the dissolved parliament is the extra constitutionality of the demand. The constitutional recourse has always been elections and the Maoists far from being the lone impediment to the polls, the exposure these standpoints bring to the parliamentary parties is that it is they who are the primary impediment to constitutional elections. As much as they tend to agree when not in power for extra constitutional recourses to the revival of the dissolved parliament, why can’t they agree with the King’s constitutional efforts for a national government composed also of the political parties represented in the dissolved parliament to conduct the elections and face the Maoists unitedly?