On Saturday, the ruling CPN-rival UML’s faction, headed by senior leaders Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal, will launch a new campaign.
Despite the leaders’ claims that the movement is intended to reinforce the party’s organization, it appears that parallel committees will be established at various levels of the party to strengthen the protest against party chairman KP Sharma Oli. The movement is feared to have the potential to break the party.
After Oli suspended Nepal and three other leaders–Bhim Rawal, Surendra Pandey, and Ghanashyam Bhusal–from the party, the faction met in Kathmandu on Friday to discuss its next move.
“It shows Comrade Oli’s dedication to severing the UML. After the conference, leader Yogesh Bhattarai told journalists, “We condemn this.”
Oli had excluded rival camp leaders from party duties on March 12. In response, the camp convened a national cadres meeting and formed parallel committees in sister organizations and districts.
The UML and the Maoist Centre were resurrected on March 7 after the Supreme Court declared the 2018 unification between them unconstitutional. This decision forced Nepal, which was planning to break the then Nepal Communist Party and form a new party with the Maoist Centre’s Pushpa Kamal Dahal if Oli was removed, to return to the UML, which he controlled.
