Nepal president asks political parties to form majority govt

Nepal’s political parties have failed to meet a seven-day deadline to pick a consensus candidate for the post of prime minister, prompting President Bidya Devi Bhandari to issue another appeal to them to initiate the process quickly.According to the constitution, the prime minister shall be elected by a majority of all the members of the parliament, if parties fail to pick a consensus candidate for the post of prime minister within a week. The president issued the call after the seven-day deadline given to form a consensus government ended on Thursday without any result, the president office said.Last week, President Bhandari had issued a call to the parties to form a consensus government within a week to choose a new prime minister on the basis of political understanding as per the constitution of Nepal. President Bhandari initiated the constitutional process to form the new government after prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal resigned on May 24 after a brief stint of nine months, honouring a power-sharing understanding with the ruling coalition partner Nepali Congress to hand over the country’s leadership to the largest party in parliament.Dahal resigned as per a deal reached in July-August last year with Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba, who is expected to take over as the prime minister.The deal was to run the government on a rotational basis until elections to the parliament are held in February 2018. Dahal is the only communist leader to become the prime minister of Nepal twice.Dahal was to hold office till local polls were held and remaining two elections – provincial and central – were to be conducted under Deuba. Millions of Nepalese on May 14 voted in the first local-level polls in two decades as the Himalayan nation took a crucial step towards cementing democracy amid political turmoil.Local-level elections could not be held after 1997 largely as a result of the decade-long Maoist insurgency that claimed more than 16,000 lives in Nepal. The elections should be held in every five years but due to the political instability, they were halted since May 1997. Dahal, who led the Maoists during the armed struggle from 1996 to 2006, is credited with transforming the rebel movement into a political party after a 2006 peace deal.