Veteran
Nepali Congress leader Sushil Koirala was on Monday elected Prime Minister of
Nepal
with the support of the CPN-UML, ending months of political instability
following last year's elections. Koirala,
the sole contestant in the premier race, was elected with 405 votes in the
601-member
Constituent Assembly. As many as 148 lawmakers from UCPN-Maoist,
Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal and some small parties in the Maoist-led
alliance voted against 75-year-old Koirala.
After
the voting, Parliament Speaker Surya Bahadur Thapa declared that Koirala had
secured the majority. The announcement was followed by applause inside the
hall. Koirala is scheduled to be sworn
in by the president later today. He is
also expected to announce a small cabinet and continue negotiations with other
political parties to join his coalition government.
The
standing committee of the CPN-UML - the second largest party which has 173
lawmakers - backed Koirala for the top post after the party reached a six-point
deal with the NC, which as 194 lawmakers. The two largest parties in the Constituent
Assembly inked the deal yesterday after several rounds of negotiations on the
issue of power sharing. Under the
six-point agreement, they agreed to promulgate the new constitution within a
year and to hold elections for the posts of president, vice president and chairman
of the Constituent Assembly after it approves the new constitution. The agreement also mentioned about taking
ownership of the past agreements of the dissolved Constituent Assembly
regarding the drafting of the constitution. The CPN-UML had earlier pressed for new
elections for president and vice president. However, after reaching a power sharing deal,
the party agreed to support Koirala as prime minister.
