Prime Minister Koirala has an 8 April deadline to get his pet Armed Police Force ordinance passed by parliament. But opposition parties have paralysed Parliament to stop him from doing precisely that. Why don't the opposition and the anti-Koirala faction want the ordinance passed? Good point. The answer to that may lie in the fact that while a paramilitary force would be most detrimental to the Maoists, the extreme left and right, the anti-Koirala faction and the UML, all agree on one thing: Koirala is too powerful. An APF would make him even more dominant. Koirala says privately he wouldn't mind giving up the prime ministership, and just wants a respectable exit. But no one is obliging him. A long shot-Parliament's failure to approve the ordinance could give him the parachute he needs.