Nepal’s interim government announced the long-awaited final names for an 18-member Cabinet on Monday but was immediately rocked when one minister refused to take her post.
The top seven jobs were appointed 20 days ago, with 11 more names announced on Monday, including the education, tourism and water-resources portfolios, state-run media said.
The ailing 84-year-old Premier Girija Prasad Koirala, who is due to travel abroad for health checks soon, was confirmed as also holding the key portfolios of palace affairs, defence, health and industry.
At a swearing-in ceremony, Koirala told the new recruits: “We’ve completed the first phase by filling the Cabinet. Now the second stage is for talks to begin with the Maoists.”
Maoist negotiators arrived on Sunday to prepare for talks with the government to try to end a 10-year insurgency in Nepal that has left more than 12 500 people dead.
“I hope that the talks will begin soon. There will be a first round of talks to create a conducive atmosphere and then Prachanda [the Maoist rebel chief] might join the final negotiations,” said Koirala.
The Cabinet announcement was overshadowed when the newly appointed minister of water resources, Chitra Lekha Yadav, said she would not take her place after being bypassed for the speaker’s job earlier this month.
“Since the seven parties’ leaders did not approve me for the speaker’s job, I refuse to join the Cabinet,” Yadav, the current deputy speaker, told reporters as she arrived for a Parliamentary session.
Yadav, from the Nepali Congress (Democratic) party and one of the few women in the 205-seat Parliament, was a leading player in the popular protests against the absolute rule of King Gyanendra.
She chaired a mock session of Parliament on the streets last year after the legislature was dissolved in 2002.
The king seized power in February 2005 but Maoists and a seven-strong coalition of parties organised weeks of protests forcing him to restore Parliament in April.
Parliament immediately called for elections to a new body to rewrite a Constitution that could end any role for the monarchy in Nepal, a key demand of the Maoists.
Nepal’s interim government also lifted the terrorist tag from the Maoists and prominent leaders have been released from prison.
But the senior Maoist negotiator, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, criticised the government for doing too little to promote peace.
“The government is not serious enough about holding peace talks,” he said.
“Although the government has done its homework, it has not been able to give full shape to its talks team,” Mahara told the privately run Nepal FM radio station.
The rebels have announced that their leader Prachanda, whose name means “fierce one”, will head eventual talks with the government.
The government is yet to name its full talks team or outline a “code of conduct” for the talks, said Mahara.
Home Minister Krishna Prasad Sitaula will head the government side but his two colleagues are yet to be named. The naming of the Cabinet should clear the way for that to happen.
Koirala’s Nepali Congress party has the largest number of Cabinet members with seven, followed by the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) with six.
Led by former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, the breakaway faction from Koirala’s Congress, the Nepali Congress (Democratic) holds four Cabinet seats — one of which was Yadav’s post.
The final seat went to the United Left Front, a member of the seven-party alliance that joined forces against Gyanendra.
Senior figures from the alliance had earlier said the Cabinet would have up to 21 members. — AFP