By IRNA,
New Delhi : On Saturday, three months after the historic constituent assembly election, the new republic of Nepal will hold another historic poll to elect the country’s first president, a post that is likely to go to a veteran communist leader with special links to India.
Madhav Kumar Nepal, ex-chief of Nepal’s third-largest party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, is likely to win the election, with the largest party in the caretaker parliament, the Maoists, saying that they would support the UML candidate.
According to Times of India report, the 55-year-old, who comes from Gaur town on the Indo-Nepal border, has roots in Bihar’s Sitamarhi district across the border.
The B. Com graduate joined the Communist Party of Nepal in 1968 and in 1974, left his job at Nepal bank to become a whole-time party worker.
Around the same time, with the royalist government banning political parties, he went underground.
In 1994, when the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) formed the minority government, Nepal was the deputy of PM Manmohan Adhikari and held the key portfolios of defence and foreign affairs.
The soft-spoken, bespectacled Nepal faced a humiliating reversal in the April election when his party could win only 103 seats out of 575.
Nepal himself lost to unknown contenders from both his constituencies – Rautahat as well as Kathmandu.
Accepting the moral responsibility for the defeat, Nepal resigned as general secretary of the party while all communist ministers quit the coalition government.
Now, fate could be smiling on the seasoned politician again with his party rooting for him as Nepal’s first president.
If Nepal wins, he will pip prime minister Girija Koirala, whose Nepali Congress party has been proposing the octogenarian for the post.
On Sunday, the newly elected constituent assembly amended the constitution to create the post of a constitutional president and on Tuesday, a parliamentary committee fixed July 19 for the first presidential election.
If he wins, Nepal would succeed deposed king Gyanendra as the head of state.
It would be a specially sweet victory since in 2003, after the king had sacked PM Sher Bahadur Deuba and was calling for “applications” for the top executive job, Nepal expressed his willingness but was rejected.