As the parliament secretariat makes all preparations to host the first session of the Constituent Assembly on May 28 and formally declare Nepal a republic, a political understanding about the formation of the new government still seems far away.This also injects fear that the proceedings of the house, especially moving official resolutions, cannot be conducted without agreement on the formation of a new government.The three major parties — Nepali Congress, Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) — are opposed to the handover of power to the Maoists without amending the interim Constitution, which currently provides that only a two-thirds majority can remove the prime minister.The three are clearly for a non-Maoist party member being the Constitutional president with emergency powers and with control of the army.“This is not acceptable to us”, said Top Bahadur Rayamajhi, a central committee member of the Maoists. But the three parties, which together have more than the number of seats held by the Maoists in the 601-member house, insist on the amendment of the Constitution as their condition for the house to sit for its inaugural session.
