By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS,
Kathmandu: Exactly three months after they helped communist leader Jhala Nath Khanal become the new prime minister, Nepal’s Maoists headed for a major triumph Wednesday with the indebted premier asked to concede the coveted home ministry to them despite protests by the opposition and public.
The 18-member cabinet headed by Khanal was ready for a reshuffle with the triumphant former guerrillas Wednesday submitting the names of several new ministers.
The Maoists named Krishna Bahadur Mahara as home minister, a berth that has been lying vacant for three months.
Mahara, already a deputy prime minister and information and communications minister, is to hand over his old ministry to fellow Maoist lawmaker Agni Prasad Sapkota.
Last year, Mahara was involved in a vote-buying scandal. He had sought NRS 50 million from a well-wisher in China to buy MPs’ votes during the ongoing prime ministerial election and help Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda win.
The mysterious emergence of an audio tape that recorded Mahara’s conversation with a middleman put paid to Prachanda’s chances of winning the election just as he was edging closer to victory.
Mahara’s appointment as home minister therefore will come as a slap in the face for prominent human rights activists and media personalities who had campaigned against it, saying it would pave the way for the Maoists withdrawing all criminal cases against partymen.
Nepal’s second largest party, the Nepali Congress that is also the main opposition party, had also asked Khanal not to concede the ministry to the Maoists.
Mahara’s nomination as home minister created a rift among the Maoists themselves. In a dramatic movement, Maoist Peace and Reconstruction Minister Barshaman Pun, whose name had also been mulled for home minister, resigned.
However, his portfolio was immediately allocated to fellow Maoist leader Biswanath Shah.
The other new Maoist ministers are Shakti Basnet (health and population), Ram Charan Chaudhary (land reforms), Mahendra Paswan (commerce), Hit Bahadur Tamang (youth and sports), Prabhu Shah (law and constitutional affairs) and Jayapuri Gharti Magar (women, children and social welfare).
Naming the new ministers has been a hugely contentious job with Prachanda and his two deputies at daggers drawn.
The induction of the new ministers comes at a time the fate of the Khanal government is growing increasingly uncertain.
The government has only 24 days to promulgate a new constitution. However, the statute lay forgotten while the major parties continued to fight over power-sharing.
A third party, the Madhesi Janadhikar Forum, also threw its fractured weight behind the Khanal government after months of bickering.
The regional party from the Terai plains has sent its chief and former foreign minister Upendra Yadav as the third deputy prime minister as well as new foreign minister.
Mohammad Ishtiaq Rai (labour and transport management), Harinarayan Yadav (agriculture and cooperatives) and Nandan Dutt (state minister for agriculture and cooperatives) are the other names proposed by the party.
The nominations have already sparked a raging debate within the fractured party with dissidents accusing their chief of taking arbitrary decisions.
To add to the new rumblings, the Maoists have called a show of strength nationwide for 10 days from May 15.