By Our Political Analyst Although Prime minister KP Sharma Oli was successful to avoid serious crisis in Saturday’s party secretariat meeting by sidelining party senior leader Madhav Nepal, yet, crisis is not over for Oli. The party’s secretariat meeting is scheduled for today to fix the agendas for tomorrow’s (7 May) standing committee meeting. The Madhav Nepal faction is ready with the agendas to be finalized from the standing committee meeting. Nepal factions’ agendas are:
  • Massive reshuffle in the cabinet
  • Changing province government chiefs
  • Political and constitutional appointments have to be done as per the party directives
  • The concept of one person one post should be implemented
  • The government should function as per the party directives
  • Ending groupism in the party and dissolving all organs below the central level of the foundations and academies established in the name of party leaders.
The question is that will PM Oli accept these agendas? Then how Oli is preparing to face tomorrow’s standing committee meeting? The standing committee has 45 members having voting rights of 40 members, in which, Oli alone is in minority. If he will be able to bag support from another party chairman Pushpakamal Dahal, vice chairman Bamdev Gautam and JN Khanal only, Oli can get majority. The latest situation is that both Dahal and Gautam are suspicious from Oli’s assurances given to them. In the standing committee meeting, how will the two leaders perform, it is important to decide on Oli’s fate. If the two leaders will take Nepal’s side, Oli will fall into minority and morally, he has to tender resignation. However, very tactically, Oli was able to avoid crisis surprisingly at the last hours on the secretariat meeting held on Saturday. As he invited crisis in the ruling Nepal Communist Party  in a dramatic manner by introducing two controversial ordinances, Prime Minister and chairman of the NCP KP Sharma Oli managed to avert the crisis as well as split in the party in an equally dramatic development. Will Oli be able to avert another crisis in the standing committee, observers are keenly watching the developments. Until Saturday morning, many people and political analysts were not sure about the fate of PM Oli as well the NCP. But when the meeting of the party secretariat concluded in the late evening on Saturday things went in favour of PM Oli after Bam Dev Gautam, who had set a fire on Baluwatar first, stood firmly in favour of PM Oli after he was assured of making a member of the House of Representatives first and then Prime Minister. With Gautam joining Oli, the much-talked-about Bhainsepati Alliance of Madhav Nepal, Pushpa Kamal  Dahal and Bam Dev Gautam crumbled. Of course, PM Oli was in crisis with the formation of the alliance at the Bhainsepati-based residence of Gautam months back. The alliance was a big threat as Dahal, Nepal and Gautam used to pose a threat to Oli. Even the latest decision to oust Oli and form a government under Nepal was taken by the alliance. The alliance had put Oli in minority from parliamentary party of NCP to Central Committee and even in the party secretariat. But now enjoys majority in secretariat. Gautam agreed to stand in favour of Oli after the latter committed to bring Gautam to the House of Representatives through a by-election. However, no deadline was fixed for that. Although there is no guarantee that Gautam will win the by-poll because he had lost the 2017 election in his home constituency.  Again, constitutionally he cannot become PM even if he reaches the Lower House because of Article 78 of the Constitution which clearly mentioned that any leader who lost the election to the House of Representatives could not be elected to the post of PM until the term of the House expires. However, the latest decision has paved way for Oli to nominate Finance Minister Yuba Raj Khatiwada in the Upper House. Khatiwda’s term in the National Assembly expired in March. Interestingly, there are a few political pundits who argued that the disputes in the ruling NCP was resolved by Chinese ambassador Hou Yanqi this time. The dramatic development of incidents and growing movement of envoy Yanqi when the dispute had reached its climax suggest truth in such claim. Of course, she met all top leaders of NCP while President Bidya Devi Bhandari had a telephone conversation with her Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping when the dispute took a nasty move.