This report is issued by the UN RCHCO with inputs from its UN Field Coordination Offices and other partners and sources. The report covers October 2012. The next report will be issued the first week of December 2012.
CONTEXT
Political update In mid-October, another deadline set by Nepal’s political leadership came and went without agreement to resolve the political crisis over steps to move the constitution making process forward. Politics remained deadlocked. As party political discussions failed, the political space and influence of President Ram Baran Yadav grew. On 9 October, the ruling Unified Communist Party of Nepal–Maoist (UCPN-M) floated a proposal to reinstate the Constituent Assembly (CA) to promulgate a constitution, as a precursor to elections. President Yadav publicly rejected the idea and the UCPN-M and other political actors accused him of overstepping his ceremonial constitutional role.
On 19 October, UCPN-M Chairperson Dahal shared a written proposal with the President and top leaders of the Nepali Congress (NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML). It proposed that the parties should agree either on reinstating the CA or holding new elections for the CA. On 31 October, the NC responded with its own political roadmap, which ruled out a revival of the CA and proposed fresh elections in the spring of 2013. The roadmap also staked NC’s claim to lead the government holding the elections. Both options of reviving the CA and holding fresh elections present considerable legal and constitutional challenges and would require consensus among the parties on several fronts, such as electoral modalities, safeguarding past CA achievements and on power-sharing. As of the release of this Monthly Update, no consensus agreement has been reached between the parties on the way forward. In the very near term, this situation may complicate the ability of the parties to also forge consensus on extending the government’s current partial budget by the deadline of 15 November.