CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) have signed a seven-point agreement on unification of the two parties late Monday night. The unified party will be called Communist Party of Nepal (CPN). Similarly, Marxism-Leninism will be the guiding principle of the unified party.
UML Chairman and Prime Minister (PM) KP Oli, Jhala Nath Khanal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Bam Dev Gautam and Ishwore Pokharel signed the agreement on behalf of UML while Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Narayan Kaji Shrestha and Ram Bahadur Thapa were the Maoist signatories.
The agreement has been signed after a meeting of unification coordination committee, which includes chairman duo Oli and Dahal, that started at the PM's official residence in Baluwatar at around seven in the evening.
The agreement has been signed after one-on-one meetings held between Oli and Dahal on Saturday and Sunday.
The agreement for unification was set to be signed on February 14 but it was postponed in the eleventh hour. The unification process was delayed by a few days after UML leaders took a stance that the ideological line of the unified party must be People's Multiparty Democracy.
The agreement signed today includes both People's Multiparty Democracy and Maoism for deliberation until the general convention of unification. The contents of People's Multiparty Democracy have been included in the agreement. The agreement mentions that the basic principles of People's Multiparty Democracy have been accepted even by the Maoists.
The agreement states that an interim political report and an interim statute will be prepared on the basis of the ideological lines, and the unified party will be operated accordingly.
Coming out of the meeting Dahal told reporters assembled at Baluwatar that the two parties have agreed for a bi-chairman system with both Oli and Dahal remaining co-chairmen until the general convention despite the issue not being mentioned in the agreement. The two chairmen will take turn to chair the party meetings, according to Dahal.
Oli and Dahal will also take turn to become PM. The major units of both the parties--politburo, standing committee and central committees--will be vertically merged including all the members of those committees.
Dahal said Maoist Center will obviously join the Oli government now that the two parties have signed the unification agreement.
