By KUNA,
New Delhi : Political parties in Nepal Tuesday agreed to have a ceremonial president and an Prime Minister with executive powers, on the eve of the Constituent Assembly (CA) meeting Wednesday that would abolish the 239-year-old monarchy and proclaim a republic. “The Communist Party of Nepal (CPN) Maoists have agreed to create a separate post of president after abolishing the monarchy,” senior politician and vice-president of Nepali Congress party Gopalman Shrestha told reporters at Katmandu today, news agency Press Trust of India reported. A formal agreement in this regard would be signed later, Shrestha said. But the major political parties — the Nepali Congress, the CPN-Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the CPN-Maoist — are yet to decide whether both the executive and ceremonial posts will be held by a single party or will be distributed among the coalition partners. Currently, the Prime Minister is also ceremonial head of state as per the interim constitution. Earlier, CPN-Maoists wanted that its Chairman Prachanda to hold both posts of the executive prime minister as well as the ceremonial president, the news agency said. The CPN (Maoists) have won 220 of the 575 contested seats in CA, short of the two-thirds majority necessary to form the next government. The Nepali Congress has won 110 seats and UML 103 seats in CA. Rest 26 members of CA will be nominated.
The historic April 10 elections to the CA dealt the final blow to monarchy. A nationwide protests had forced King Gyanendra to surrender power in April 2006. Thereafter, the seven-party-alliance ruled Nepal. Maoists joined the government last year.
Kings in Nepal began to lose power in 1990 when a pro-democracy agitation forced the then king Birendra to lift the ban on political parties and become a constitutional monarch. An elected prime minister ruled the country thereafter. King Gyanendra, however, seized absolute power in 2005 with Army support.