Maoist meet : Plenum aye to one-man leadership
KATHMANDU, JUL 22 -
The five-month-long power struggle in the UCPN (Maoist) came to an end on Sunday with the party’s plenum adopting a single leadership system under Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal as an interim measure.
The three-day plenum concluded on Sunday after it endorsed Dahal’s document on organisational disputes and the party’s election policy.
Taken as a temporary step to resolve the party’s internal leadership row, the one-man leadership system will continue until the party holds its national convention after the November CA elections and settles the organisational problems.
Top leaders, including Narayan Kaji Shrestha and Post Bahadur Bogati, resigned from their respective office bearer positions and agreed to remain as Central Committee (CC) members, while party structures such as the office bearers’ team, the Standing Committee and the Politburo
have ceased to exist. Another top leader Baburam Bhattarai resigned as the party’s vice president on June 30. Dahal now directly leads the party’s CC.
Since the seventh plenum in February, the party has been struggling to form various committees, while Bhattarai’s sudden resignation complicated matters for the party. Dahal has now emerged all powerful in the party. All powers centred on him during the Maoist insurgency, but the party went for a collective leadership by forming a seven-member office bearers’ team after it joined peaceful politics in 2006.
Bhattarai struggled against such a leadership model during the insurgency, while he is now backing the same idea.
Addressing the 500-member plenum’s concluding ceremony, Dahal said the single leadership system is just a temporary measure. “Such an arrangement will be in place until the party’s national convention and the party will then go back to the collective leadership system,” he said.
According to a leader, top leaders of the party have agreed to form within a month an informal team that will take important decisions. The plenum also launched a one-month-long election campaign across the country. According to the party, all the leaders will be sent to all the 240 constituencies from next week onwards for poll preparations.
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