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Nepalese prime minister steps down over bid to oust army chief
Sydney Morning Herald - May 5, 2009
Maseeh Rahman and Owen Bowcott – Nepal's Maoist Prime Minister, Pushma Kamal Dahal, resigned last night in a crisis triggered by his sacking of the army chief.
The Government fired General Rookmangud Katawal at the weekend for allegedly disobeying instructions over hiring recruits and refusing to accept the supremacy of the civilian authorities.
But late yesterday the country's President, Ram Baran Yadav, who is formally commander-in-chief of the army, denounced the sacking as unconstitutional and overruled the Prime Minister. He ordered General Katawal to return to work.
"I have resigned from the post of Prime Minister from today for the protection of democracy and peace," Mr Dahal, also known by his nom-de-guerre, Prachanda, said in a televised address to the nation.
"The move by the President is an attack on this infant democracy and the peace process," Mr Dahal said, accusing the President of having taken an "unconstitutional and undemocratic decision. The interim constitution does not give any right to the president to act as a parallel power," he said.
His departure is a severe setback to the 2006 peace pact ending a decade-long civil war between Maoist insurgents and the army. The agreement enabled the Maoists to enter the political mainstream. They won the election last year.
Two other parliamentary groups previously allied to the Maoists have withdrawn from the ruling coalition in protest at the army chief's dismissal.
The Maoists, who abolished the monarchy and turned the nation into a republic, now face the biggest political challenge of their short reign. Demonstrations in support of and against the army chief's sacking erupted in Kathmandu shortly after the Government announced its decision, and top army commanders met at an emergency meeting.
General Katawal became army chief despite doubts about his alleged role in a particularly brutal phase of the 10-year civil war between the Nepalese army and the Maoist People's Liberation Army.
But the main cause of his tussle with Mr Dahal is his resistance to inducting into the army more than 19,000 former Maoist guerillas who are housed in camps run by the United Nations and whom the army views as politically indoctrinated. General Katawal has been taking recruits from elsewhere.
The army also accuses the Maoists of not fulfilling commitments to dismantle the paramilitary structure of their feared youth wing and not returning property grabbed during the civil war, which left about 13,000 dead.
The Maoists won elections to the new constitutional assembly in April last year, positioning themselves to push through what they pledged would be a radical program of reform in one of the world's poorest countries.
After Mr Dahal's Government lost its majority yesterday, the Maoists were said to be talking to smaller parties in search of new allies in the national assembly, while opposition groups were exploring the possibility of an alternative government. Recent rumours of an impending military coup also gained momentum. (Guardian News & Media, Agence France-Presse)
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