Everything was set for Wednesday’s meeting of the House of Representatives. The Parliament Secretariat had published a tentative list of agenda items while Speaker Agni Sapkota had called a Business Advisory Committee meeting to finalise the agenda.

However, the meeting was adjourned abruptly at around eight in the evening, hours before the scheduled House meeting. The next meeting of the House of Representatives has been scheduled for February 14.

“The meeting scheduled for Wednesday was postponed as per the request of the government,” Gopal Nath Yogi, secretary at the House of Representatives, told the Post.

This is the second time in a row the House meeting has been adjourned at the 11th hour. It’s meeting scheduled for January 30 was postponed by 10 days to Wednesday citing the threat of Covid.

However, it was the differences among the parties on tabling the Millennium Challenge Corporation Nepal Compact that prompted Sapkota to postpone the meeting, according to officials at the Parliament Secretariat.

At least two ministers of Deuba's Cabinet said the discussions on the MCC were going on and they had yet to come to a conclusion.

“We are discussing it [MCC],” said Balkrishna Khand, the home minister.

But he refused to elaborate.

The government has been working to table the MCC compact in Parliament in the upcoming meeting. But the government is yet to make a common understanding among the parties as the coalition partners are sharply divided.

Earlier in the day, a tentative agenda was published for Wednesday’s meeting, which was scheduled for 1pm. Though the schedule did not include the MCC compact, leaders had said the government would push the issue during the meeting of the Business Advisory Committee.

Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Dilendra Badu has been continuously meeting Speaker Agni Sapkota as the contact person of the government and asking the latter to table the compact. He met Sapkota on Tuesday afternoon as well giving the government’s message that it wants the MCC compact be tabled at the earliest. According to officials at the Speaker’s secretariat, Minister Badu had also discussed with Sapkota about tabling the compact soon.

Sapkota wasn’t willing.

According to officials at the Speaker’s secretariat, the Speaker reiterated his position that there has to be an agreement amongst the parties before the compact is tabled. The Speaker, according to the member of his secretariat, also told Minister Badu that the compact needs serious deliberations so the ongoing obstruction by the main opposition party must be withdrawn first.

“As far as I know, the Speaker has been sending the message to political parties to make additional efforts to end the obstructions in parliament through the law minister,” said one of the officials at the Speaker’s secretariat.

The UML has been obstructing the House meetings starting September 8 objecting to the Speaker's refusal to issue a notice in line with the party’s decision to expel its 14 lawmakers including Madhav Nepal. The main opposition on August 17 wrote to the Speaker to issue a notice. However, on August 29 he said it was not necessary to take action because they had already formed a new party —Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist).

As the MCC compact snowballed into a huge political issue, Sapkota started his own consultations. Questions arose whether Sapkota, a Maoist leader, as a presiding officer of the House should get involved in creating opinions on issues that the government plans to table in Parliament.

Experts on parliamentary affairs say it’s none of the Speaker's business to “seek consensus” on an issue that the government is deliberating on. They say Sapkota is going beyond his constitutional briefs discussing whether to allow the tabling of the MCC compact in Parliament or not.

“If an issue like MCC becomes the bone of contention, it should be the government’s headache, not the Speaker’s,” Daman Nath Dhungana, a former Speaker and a civil society member, told the Post.

Meanwhile, the government is also holding talks with different parties which have scheduled their “crucial meetings” over the next few days.

The Nepali Congress is holding a meeting of its work execution committee on Thursday while the Central Committee meeting of the CPN (Maoist Centre) has been scheduled for Friday and Saturday.

Government’s spokesperson Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said the House meeting was postponed also to make necessary preparations to table the MCC compact in Parliament.

“The government has been working to table the compact,” Karki, also the minister for communication and information technology, told the Post. “Discussions are going on with all the stakeholders. But we are yet to reach an agreement among parties.”

The top leaders of the three major parties had met on Sunday amid the confusion over the US compact following the revelation of two letters– one by Deuba and Dahal to MCC seeking some time for the compact ratification, and the other by MCC headquarters to the two leaders setting a February 28 deadline.

But they could not come to a conclusion as all three parties are focussed on their own interests.

Another minister said the parties will hold rigorous discussions for a few days until they agree to endorse the MCC compact.

According to officials at the Prime Minister’s Office, the prime minister is determined to endorse the MCC compact.

“With the CPN-UML giving a green signal to endorse the compact, the prime minister has also been talking with other parties like the Loktantrik Samajbadi Party and leaders including Baburam Bhattarai,” said an official at the Prime Minister’s secretariat asking not to be named. “The MCC compact will be tabled soon.”

The Post’s repeated attempts to speak to Minister Badu went in vain.