The Himalayan Kingdom and the world’s last Hindu Kingdom enters into the modern era by abolishing its century-old monarchy as a special assembly voted against Nepal’s 240-year-old Hindu monarchy. With this, Nepal is now declared as a Federal Democratic Republic, a demand of present Maoist in power to end a decade-long war.
With the amendment of interim constitution a special assembly voted in favour of abolishing the monarchy by 560 to 4. The King Gyanendra now has given two weeks time to vacate the royal Narayanhiti palace in the capital, Kathmandu, and live as a common citizen losing all perks and privileges.
Earlier on Tuesday, three major political parties holding most of the seats of the 601-member parliament, including Nepali Congress (NC), Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) agreed to introduce a proposal to implement republic at the Constituent Assembly and to project a ceremonial president and executive prime minister.
The constitutional president will be the commander in chief of the national army but has to act in the recommendation of prime minister and cabinet ministers as a whole. To all awareness, Nepal is now an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular and democratic republic.
Demise of Monarchy
Nepal in its struggle for democracy witnessed a decade long civil war between government and Maoists from 1995 until the 2006 peace deal to hold a constitutional assembly and end monarchy.
The collapse of monarchy starts with the massacre of popular King Birendra and his family by the Crown Prince Dipendra, who later shot himself followed by King Gyanendra’s seizure of power.
However, the common men’s faith on Monarchial rule further crushed as the King took hold of absolute power on February 01, 2005, dismissing the entire government to curb the violent Maoists rebel.
The King though agreed to relinquish his sovereign authority on April 24, 2006 by reinstating the parliament, the House of Representative (Pratinidhi Sabha) on May 18, 2006, voted for a secular state abolishing the age old Hindu kingdom status.
On December 28, 2007, the interim parliament passed a bill and declared Nepal to be a federal democratic republic by amending the Article-159 of the constitution replacing ‘King’ with the ‘Head of State’. The bill passed on May 28 (Wednesday) with the closure of monarchy.
In recent political development, the Nepal Maoist after entering into the political frame won 220 seats in the assembly election held in April 10, 2008. Nepal Congress, the oldest political party own 110 while the Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum secured 103 and 52 respectively.
However, the Maoist leader Prachanda says he wants all parties that won seats, including ethnic groups, to join a “consensus government” as they failed to gain a simple majority in the first election for the constitution assembly.
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