Nepal's government denounces CA meeting disruption by opposition parties

The Nepalese government has denounced the attack on the Constituent Assembly (CA) chairman and some senior leaders from the ruling coalition during a meeting Tuesday midnight by lawmakers from the opposition parties.

In a briefing to over two dozen Kathmandu-based ambassadors regarding Nepal's latest political development, two ministers of the Nepalese government on Thursday said that the brawl in the CA meeting was against the norms and values of the CA as well as democratic practice.

Minister for Finance Dr. Ram Sharan Mahat and Minister for Foreign Affairs Mahendra Bahadur Pandey told diplomats that the brawl in the CA was highly "deplorable."

The Himalayan country's constitution making body turned into a battleground on Tuesday after opposition parties disrupted an assembly meeting and attacked ruling parties' lawmakers.

Lawmakers from opposition parties, led by UCPN (Maoist), had vandalized infrastructures when CA Chairman Subhas Chandra Nembang asked Nepali Congress Chief Whip Chin Kaji Shrestha to form a panel to initiate a voting process for the settlement of contentious issues.

"We informed our stand to the diplomatic fraternity that opposition lawmakers' vandalism and attack on the CA chairman and some senior leaders of the ruling parties during the CA meeting was shameful," the minister for foreign affairs told reporters on Thursday following the meeting with the diplomatic community.

"The Constituent Assembly would promulgate the new constitution sooner or later even if efforts have been failed for this time and Nepal would move forward and achieve stability and economic prosperity ending a protracted transition," the foreign minister added.

The two ministers' briefing to foreign diplomats came at a time when Nepal parties have missed the self-imposed deadline of constitution drafting due to sharp differences among political parties concerning thorny issues of the new statute, such as federalism, the form of governance, judiciary and electoral systems.

"Nepali Congress and CPN-UML will go for voting in line with the existing (interim) constitution so that the constitution could be promulgated if efforts to reach consensus among all parties fail. The same thing we told the diplomats," the finance minister said the briefing.

He said the ruling parties will declare the new statute through more than two-third of majority in the CA.

During the briefing the two ministers had also urged the ambassadors to follow the diplomatic decorum in line with the Diplomatic Code of Conduct issued by the Nepalese government. Endi