The appointment of Sher Bahadur Deuba as Nepal’s Prime Minister for a record fifth time after the Supreme Court’s intervention does not seem to provide the much sought-after political stability in the country as he will have to go for a floor test in Parliament within 30 days.
Even if the 75-year-old veteran politician and Nepali Congress (NC) president, who has only 61 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives, somehow wins the confidence vote, fresh elections will have to be conducted in 18 months, The Kathmandu Post newspaper reported. If he loses the floor test, the country will go to polls in six months, it said.
The House of Representatives — the lower house of Nepal’s Parliament — has completed more than three-and-a-half years of its five-year tenure. In its order to appoint Deuba as prime minister, the Supreme Court on Monday said that he should “complete the process of getting the vote of confidence as per Article 76 (6) of the Constitution”, the report said. According to Article 76 (6), he will have to go for a floor test in Parliament within 30 days of appointment, it said.
“The result of the vote of trust will decide the fate of the Deuba government,” the newspaper quoted Bipin Adhikari, former dean at Kathmandu University School of Law, as saying. Deuba, notwithstanding his 61 seats in the House, had staked claim to form the government with the support of lawmakers from four other parties — the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre), the Madhav Kumar Nepal faction of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), the Upendra Yadav faction of the Janata Samajbadi Party and Rastriya Janamorcha.
Altogether, 149 members of the House of Representatives supported him, including 26 from the Madhav Nepal faction of the UML. If the 26 UML dissidents continue to support him, Deuba’s tenure will last for one-and-a-half-years when general elections are to be held. If not, fresh elections have to be called within six months.
