M A I N   N E W S

After 16 attempts & seven months, Nepal finally gets a Prime Minister
Bishnu Budhathoki in Kathmandu

Ending a seven-month-long standoff over the prime ministerial election, Nepal's Parliament on Thursday elected veteran communist leader and chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) Jhalanath Khanal as the new prime minister of the Federal Republic of Nepal after Leftists formed an alliance.

Jhalanath Khanal: Communist to the core * Jhalanath Khanal, who was elected chairman of the UML in February 2009, was born in Ilam in May 1950. A graduate in political science and history from Tribhuvan University, Khanal entered politics in 1965. * He was one of the founding members of the National Co-ordination Committee for all Communist Revolutionaries of Nepal in 1975 and CPN (ML) in 1978. He was jailed for a total of 26 months in his early political career and went underground in 1979. * He was the general secretary of CPN (ML) from 1982 to 1990. After restoration of democracy, he was a minister in the interim government formed in 1990. He was elected as a lawmaker in the 1991 and 1994 general elections. * Khanal has remained a central committee and standing committee member of UML since 1998. In 2005, he became its acting general secretary.

UML chairman Khanal, 61, was elected by securing 368 votes in the 601-member parliament. As many as 557 members were present today.

While his nearest rival Ram Chandra Poudel from the Nepali Congress bagged 122 votes, Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar of the Madhes-based parties got only 67 votes.

Khanal proved lucky and became the third communist prime minister after the April 2006 uprising by replacing his fellow comrade Madhav Kumar Nepal after the Unified CPN-Maoists, the single largest party in parliament, decided to withdraw its candidate and forge a Left alliance by extending support to Khanal in the prime ministerial election.

As the Madhes-based parties along with other fringe parties decided to field Deputy Prime Minister and leader of Madhesi People's Rights Fourm (Democratic) from southern plain Bijaya Kumar Gachchhadar as their prime ministerial candidate, Maoist supremo Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, abruptly withdrew his candidacy and announced support for Khanal.

Meanwhile, Nepali Congress candidate Poudel and Gachchhadar have expressed scepticism towards the recently developed “Left alliance”, saying that it could imperil the peace and constitution-drafting process.

Earlier, Khanal had urged Poudel and Gachchhadar to withdraw their candidacy and support him to form a consensus government to make the peace and constitution-drafting process a success.

While speaking in Parliament, Dahal claimed that he had decided to sacrifice by withdrawing his candidacy and support Khanal to prove to the national and international community that Nepalese leaders were capable of taking crucial decisions by themselves.

He also reiterated that his party would concentrate on taking the protracted peace and constitution-drafting process to a logical end within the stipulated time frame.

Earlier, as he failed to convince the UML, Nepali Congress and Madhes-based parties to offer their support to him, CPN-Maoist chairman Dahal called an emergency meeting of the Maoists Standing Committee at the Parliament Secretariat and decided to support Khanal. However, party vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai along with over dozen of Maoists lawmakers registered their dissent against the party decision.

Khanal will take the oath of office once President Ram Baran Yadav returns after concluding his 10-day official visit to India on Friday.