Unholy business

Playing with the Political Parties Act will further undermine ruling parties’ democratic credentials.

Prime Minister and CPN-UML chair KP Sharma Oli is not a patient person. If the ruling alliance had a majority in the upper house, he would perhaps have already pushed through an amended version of the Political Parties Act. The law defines criteria under which dissidents of a political party can split and form a new outfit if they can prove the support of a certain number of central committee members and/or lawmakers of the mother party. In August 2021, the then Sher Bahadur Deuba government had issued an ordinance to ease the split of political parties. According to the 2021 provision, 20 percent of a party’s central committee members ‘or’ 20 percent lawmakers could break away to form a new party. Before that, a dissident group had to show the support of 40 percent central committee members and 40 percent lawmakers to register a new party. The Deuba government had changed the law in order to help CPN-UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal and Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal’s Mahantha Thakur launch their own parties. Deuba was repaying these leaders for helping him defang Oli, who as prime minister in early 2021 had twice dissolved the federal lower house.