In another interesting move, Nepal’s Federal Parliament turned down the UNDP’s USD 5.9 million worth ‘Parliamentary Support Project’

The five-year project was signed between Manohar Bhattarai from the Parliament Secretariat and Renaud Meyer representative of UNDP on April 23, 2018.

UNDP has been providing logistic support and capacity enhancement since 2008 through this project, says a Parliament Secretariat official.

This move comes as a measure to protect Nepal laws that do not favor foreign aid in national business.

In a meeting, House of Representatives Speaker Krishna Bahadur Mahara told the Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli that foreign aid was not a Parliament issue, rather a government-related subject.

“The government should deal with issues related to foreign aid.

It does not fall under our jurisdiction,” says Mahara.

In the course of their meeting, Mahara advised that the project amount be diverted to the construction of a permanent Parliament building instead of investing on logistic support for lawmakers and secretariats of the National Assembly along with seven provincial assemblies and the Parliament.

The main aim of this project is to support the formulation of practices and procedures within the Federal Parliament and Nepal’s provincial assemblies, which reflect international best practices in terms of transparency, inclusivity, accountability and effectiveness.

“By working to establish a more accountable, transparent, inclusive and effective parliamentary system, it is possible to address a critical aspect of the domestic systems that are required to ensure full development of Nepal,” reads the agreement.

As a secondary benefit, this project will also build close relationships between the constitutionally-mandated democratic institutions in Nepal, and each province and will assess how the former will be used to aid the UN and other development co-assistants in doing their work on behalf of Nepali citizens.

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Representing their community background, some of the members took oath in their respective languages.

In Janakpur province, out of 107 members, 47 took oath in Maithili, 25 in Bhojpuri, 24 in Nepali and 11 in Hindi.

Seven Provincial Assembly members were elected for the seven different provincial assemblies namely Koshi (Capital: Biratnagar), Janakpur (Janakpur), Bagmati (Hetauda), Gandaki (Pokhara), Lumbini (Rupandehi), Karnali (Surkhet) and Far West (Kairali).

Anuradha Koirala in Province 3

Renowned Nepali human rights activist Anuradha Koirala took oath as the Governor of Province 3 on January 20, 2018.

Koirala has been widely-acclaimed for their extensive social activism through fight against women trafficking, among others and was conferred with the CNN Hero 2010 award.

Continuing her journey as a social worker, she joined the mainstream Nepali politics through Nepali Congress on November 12, 2017.

Govinda Subba for Province 1, Ratneshwar Lal Kayastha for Province 2, Baburam Kunwar for Province 4, Umakant Jha for Province 5, Durga Keshar Khanal for Province 6 and Mohan Raj Malla for Province 7 in Farwest are among others across different provinces.

On New Governance

Meanwhile, the Communist Alliance members met for a discussion on setting top priorities of the new Nepali Government that is yet to be formed on January 21, 2017

The Party Unity Coordination Committee (PUCC) meeting called for formation of a special task force to ensure good governance and development teams.

The resultant task force would set priorities for the new government based on the joint election manifesto to be formed by the two left parties, CPN-UML and CPM-MC.

Power sharing, organisational integration and ideologies for the unified party were among key issues Oli and Dahal discussed, informed PUCC member Narayan Kaji Shrestha.

“We asked the province chiefs of the party to finalize the names according to the clusters as decided by the task force,” Shrestha added while informed that the names would be announced on Jan 26, 2018.

Maoist Centre leader Pun said that the coordination committee endorsed the report and the two top leaders will make any correction if needed.

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