POLITICS-Nepal Communist Party finalises its political document

The ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) Monday finalised its much-awaited political document, putting an end to speculation surrounding the official view point and ideologies of the country's largest political party that commands around two-third majority in the Parliament. The document will be released on Tuesday as it has gone to the press for printing purposes, said a senior NCP leader.

The NCP's two co-chairs - Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal "Prachanda" - endorsed the document on Monday. The party's political document was drafted by a nine-member committee led by senior party leader Madhav Kumar Nepal.

The NCP's Standing Committee had unanimously endorsed the document and handed it over to the two co-chairs for their final approval around a year ago. But it has not been made public till date due to differences over party's political ideology among senior party members. Prior to the parties' unification, the CPN-UML followed the political ideology of Peoples Multiparty Democracy and the CPN Maoist Centre followed the ideology of the "21st Century's Peoples Democracy and Maoist ideology."

"The PM and I finalised the document on Monday. It will be published by Tuesday," former prime minister Prachanda told a programme organised by the Nepal Telecommunications National Employees' Association. "No change has been made to the document submitted by the Nepal-led committee," he added.

There has been a lot of speculation about the party's ideology ever since the political document was drafted. Earlier, there were debates on whether the NCP - which was formed following merger between CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre in May 2018 - should embrace "people's multi-party democracy" or "21st century people's democracy" as its key political ideology.