Kathmandu — Chairperson of the CPN (Maoist Centre), Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’, has stated that the party has been seriously engaged in in-depth study and debate regarding the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact from the very beginning.
Speaking at the launch event of the book "MCC in Nepal" authored by Leelamani Pokharel, held in Kathmandu on Tuesday, Prachanda said that the party had been compelled to pass the MCC with an interpretive declaration and provisions for potential protests after recognizing the grave risk of the compact being ratified in its original form.
He said, “Back during the time of the unified Nepal Communist Party (NCP), I personally led the initiative to form a task force to study the MCC. The task force submitted a report concluding that the MCC should not be ratified in its original form.”
Prachanda further remarked that at that time, the Nepali Congress was strongly pushing for the compact to be passed without any amendments. “However, when we discussed it with the UML (CPN-UML), their stance was even more rigid than that of the Congress. UML Chairperson KP Sharma Oli and the party leadership firmly opposed making even a single full stop of change in the compact,” he said.
He added, “Oli was even harsher than the Congress, insisting that not a word should be changed. Some of our comrades had gone to meet him with a sliver of hope but returned disappointed. We, a group of four, went despite discomfort, thinking that dialogue for the good of the country is necessary. But the language used by Oli was humiliating—worse than what we had heard from the Congress.”
Prachanda also accused the UML of being the party that had agreed in principle to make Nepal a part of the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) and even the State Partnership Program (SPP).
