The 11th general convention of the CPN-UML is set to kick off at Sallaghari, Bhaktapur on Saturday to elect a new leadership in the party.

Over 2,000 delegates including those elected from the party’s organisational tiers have already arrived in Kathmandu to participate in the convention, which will be inaugurated by party chair and former prime minister KP Sharma Oli.

As the party has already concluded its policy convention in the first week of September, the general convention will now elect the new leadership amid competition between Oli and senior vice chairman Ishwar Pokhrel.

Party leaders said there is still a slim hope of consensus between Oli and Pokhrel, but it is unlikely. The two factions will announce their respective panels for all bodies including 15 office bearer positions and 251 central committee members.

Oli is confident that he will easily beat Pokhrel, but with strong backing from former President Bidya Devi Bhandari and other senior leaders including vice-chairs, Pokhrel looks as hopeful, said party leaders.

During the process of electing general convention delegates, both Oli and Pokhrel fielded their own panels in almost all districts.

Pokhrel’s announcement to challenge Oli for the top post in early September triggered sharp polarisation in the party, from the centre down to the grassroots.

Each camp has already held several rounds of separate gatherings and meetings in order to bolster its positions.

Party standing committee member Rajan Bhattarai claimed that around 300,000 party members could take part in the inaugural session.

“Besides electing a new leadership of the party, we will launch a mega campaign against political vendetta against us, for the protection of the constitution and [political] system,” said Bhattarai.

Although foreign guests could not be invited to the convention, he stated that they had been requested to send their wishes. The party has invited 16 political parties to attend the convention.

The party plans to use electronic voting machines to elect new leadership.

After a large number of party leaders expressed their desire to contest for office-bearer positions, the party summoned the meeting of Secretariat on Friday to discuss increasing the number of office bearers. But the meeting failed to reach consensus and Oli’s bid to increase the seats of office-bearers was blocked by the Pokhrel camp, said party leaders.

Oli wanted to amend the party statute, which was endorsed only in the first week of September from the policy convention.

Oli is reportedly struggling to accommodate dozens of senior leaders loyal to him as many of them aspired for the office-bearers’ positions.

But the Pokhrel faction, which does not face similar internal competition, strongly opposed the charter amendment.

The Oli faction had proposed increasing the number of office-bearers from 15 to 19. It wanted to add two posts for vice-chair and two posts for party secretary.

“We are not going to amend the party charter to increase the number of office-bearers,” Deputy General Secretary Pradeep Gyawali said after the meeting. “We will elect the new leadership as per the decision of the statute convention held in September.”

Central committee member Bishnu Rijal admitted that the Oli faction was under pressure to manage aspirants; the Oli faction had floated the proposal while the Pokhrel faction opposed it as they were not in such a position.

With the charter amendment bid defeated, the general convention will elect 15 office-bearers including party chair and 251 central committee. Another 10 percent of members would be nominated.

The secretariat meeting nominated 108 representatives from different clusters to participate in the general convention. The meeting also objected to Wednesday’s agreement between the government and Gen Z groups, calling it unconstitutional, according to Gyawali.

The meeting decided that a “concept paper” tabled by Pokhrel earlier this week will not be discussed in the closed-door session of the convention. The paper, however, will be distributed to convention delegates.

Pokhrel’s paper proposed a set of reforms to steer the party in the changed context, after the September Gen Z movement.

Over 24,00 delegates will take part in the closed-door sessions and the voting process.

Tensions between the two camps—Oli and Pokharel—have intensified in the run-up to the convention.

Some UML leaders even urged the two camps to stop the “media trial”.

On Thursday, Chairman Oli held a press interaction while on Friday, the Pokhrel faction organised a gathering of party youths.

UML vice chair Surendra Pandey said that they want to end the tradition of selecting leaders based on the discretion of top leaders.