Nepal and China’s ruling communist parties are holding a workshop later on Friday where they are expected to share experience on running the party and government.
The meeting is scheduled for 1:30 pm in Nepal.
“We are preparing for a virtual meeting with the Communist Party of China this afternoon,” said Bishnu Sapkota, press advisor to party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal who will make his remarks.
The virtual meeting will be held from the party headquarters Dhumbarahi in Kathmandu and other leaders would join from all seven provinces while the CPC’s leaders from Tibet Autonomous Region would also join.
Some senior party leaders, however, said they are not aware of such a meeting.
“I am not aware of the meeting,” said Narayan Kaji Shrestha, spokesperson for the Nepal Communist Party. “No one has told me about it.”
The School Department of the Nepal Communist Party, headed by Ishwar Pokhrel, is organising the meeting from the Nepali side, according to a Central Committee member.
The Department of Foreign Affairs of the party is responsible for holding such meetings, said the member.
“The Department of Foreign Affairs is not aware of the function,” Bishnu Rijal, deputy chief of the department, told the Post. “Members of the party’s Department of Foreign Affairs are not invited and the list of the participants was prepared by the School Department.”
Prakash Chandra Timilsena/TKP
From the Chinese side, the International Department of the Communist Party of China, which is headed by Song Tao, is taking the lead.
The central member, who requested anonymity, also said that he was wondering if the timing for the meeting is right, given the border stand-off between India and China and souring of the relationship between Kathmandu and New Delhi over Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura.
Last year too, weeks before Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Nepal, the ruling Nepal Communist Party had organised a two-day symposium in Kathmandu, where scores of senior Communist Party of China leaders had participated
Though ruling party leaders had maintained that the symposium was about learning from China’s ruling party—particularly on functioning and discipline–many believed the event meant the arrival of the Chinese President Xi Jinping’s doctrine, widely known as Xi Jinping Thought, to Kathmandu.
Foreign policy analysts had told the Post then that the Nepal ‘training’ was part of an exercise by Beijing to export its ideology, which goes hand-in-hand with the flexing of its financial and technological muscles across the world.
On Friday, a former foreign minister was quick to comment that such a meeting was objectionable.
“Objectionable, a neo-colonial practice,” Kamal Thapa, also the chairman of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, wrote on Twitter. “What will happen if other political parties also start receiving training and financial assistance from foreign parties whom they are comfortable with? Is it an attempt to make Nepal a playground for international forces?”
Rajendra Dahal, senior journalist and former press adviser to President Rambaran Yadav, also questioned in a similar vein.
“What will be the reaction of the Nepal Communist Party and the government led by it if the BJP or any other Indian party starts imparting training with such big banners on agendas including ‘Hindutva’?,” Dahal wrote on Twitter.
According to party leaders, more than 100 leaders and cadres of the ruling Nepal Communist Party are scheduled to participate in the virtual meeting from Kathmandu and provinces.
10.12°C Kathmandu
