Kathmandu: Nepali Congress on Tuesday stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai to resign and said his efforts to stick to the post was tantamount to "childish tantrums" and his remarks smack of authoritarianism.
Bhattarai, who returned home after attending a three day UN summit in Brazil yesterday has refused to step down, saying he will not bow to pressure from the opposition.
Nepali Congress leader Arjun Narsingh speaking at an interaction programme here said that the Prime Minister`s remarks smack of authoritarianism and was driven by the intention to capture state authority.
Nepali Congress will organise protests against Bhattarai`s statement and remove him from the top post, he said.
Narsingh said that his party’s Central Working Committee would announce a common candidate for the post of prime minister within the next ten days.
Either former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba or Vice President of the party Ram Chandra Poudel would be picked as the prime ministerial candidate, he said.
The NC leader ruled out the possibility of another Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in the country and said the parties should go for parliamentary elections.
Meanwhile, CPN-UML Chairman Jhala Nath Khanal said that Bhattarai’s statement that he will not resign “is no more than a child’s tantrums”.
“...At a time when he should be working for political consensus, PM Bhattarai is throwing childish tantrums.”
“No news of force from Rio would work in Nepal,” Khanal said, hinting at the high level meetings Bhattarai had in Brazil with top world leaders including Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Bhattarai also made headline back home when his efforts to meet Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao could not be materialized.
Despite efforts made by Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Nepalese embassy in Brazil to the Chinese side to fix a meeting between the two leaders, it could not be aterialized, reports The Kathmandu Post.
It was not immediately clear whether the Nepali bureaucracy failed to follow a due diplomatic protocol for the meeting or the Chinese side gave the Nepali PM a deliberate snub, the daily adds.
PTI
