Old fox wins again

Oli’s new assertion of power in the UML has raised some troubling questions.

Former President Bidya Devi Bhandari’s aborted re-entry into the CPN-UML has again highlighted the difficulty of changing the party’s leadership, the power-obsessed nature of its top leaders and the helplessness of party members and committees before the manoeuvering of powerful leaders. The UML’s central committee meeting that concluded on Tuesday effectively stopped former President Bidya Devi Bhandari from rejoining the party. As no UML leader posed a serious threat to Oli’s leadership, he took Bhandari’s planned comeback as a threat and applied all methods to stop her.