KATHMANDU, April 17: The Party Unification Coordination Committee of the CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) are meeting today at Baluwatar. Maoist leaders said that they are expecting a concrete proposal on power-sharing during a joint meeting of the party unification committee slated for Tuesday morning.
The Committee is expected to settle issues that have been causing delay in party unification. Yesterday, the two communist parties agreed to make a last moment ditch effort to unify the parties on April 22. While the UML and Maoist Center have already inked a seven-point framework merger deal, they have not been able to finalize the political and ideological draft due to differences over some key issues.
Yesterday, Maoist Center’s chairperson, Pushpa Kamal Dahal met with KP Sharma Oli, prime minister and Dahal’s counterpart in the UML where both agreed to concentrate their efforts to sort out differences through high level discussions within the next few days.
PM Oli, Dahal meet for decisive talk
Today’s meeting will invite leaders from both the parties to hold a ‘decisive negotiation’ on remaining issues of merger. So far, almost 80 percent of disputes have been sorted out. However, differences on organizational and ideological issues have affected the much hyped merger.
"Our party will take an appropriate decision once the UML comes forward with a concrete proposal. There is still a chance of agreement if the UML makes sincere efforts to accommodate us. But nothing will happen if there is no change in its approach," said Maoist leader Mani Thapa.
At present, key differences exist in equal power sharing and representation, election symbol and recognition of ‘people’s war’ in the statute of the new party.
