The general secretary of the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) Madhav Kumar Nepal has blamed Nepali Congress (NC) for sabotaging his party’s efforts to ensure that a referendum would be held to determine the fate of monarchy.

He said that although all other parties in the SPA had agreed for referendum and for holding elections to the Constituent Assembly (CA) on the basis of Proportional Representation (PR) system, it was due to the refusal of NC that both these proposals were shot down. That is why, he said – speaking at the meeting of UML parliamentary party – the UML had to write down Note of Dissent on both these points in the November 8 agreement between the SPA government and the Maoists.

In the agreement, the SPA government and the Maoists have agreed to determine the fate of monarchy through the first meeting of CA by a simple majority. Likewise, they have also agreed to hold the CA elections based on Mixed Proportional System.

Stating that there was no alternative other than establishing democratic republic in the country, Nepal also took a swipe at the Maoist leadership for “spreading baseless rumors that the SPA and the Maoists have agreed to let Prime Minister Koirala continue as the head of the forthcoming interim government as well.”

Maoist chairman Prachanda had, on November 8, stated that changing Koirala’s leadership before the elections to the CA could sabotage the whole process.

Meanwhile, reacting to Nepal’s criticism, Maoist leader Dr. Baburam Bhattarai asserted that – “If it was alright for the UML to accept Koirala’s leadership after April 24 when we had called for the continuation of the movement, it is now a shameless act (for Nepal) to raise these issues. We have accepted Koirala as the leader of SPA.”

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