Nepal is likely to get its first female President in less than two weeks.
CPN (UML), which is now leading a collation government, on Monday chose its Vice President Bidya Bhandari as a presidential candidate.
UML’s collation partners UCPN (M), RPP-N and MJF-D are expected to back Bhandari’s candidacy in a vote scheduled for 27 November in Parliament. If that happens, Bhandari will be Nepal’s first female Head of the Nation.
The main opposition NC has also decided to contest the presidential election. But it is yet to pick its presidential candidate and unlikely to win the election. Early this month, NC President Sushil Koirala had lost election for Prime Minister to UML Chair KP Oli.
Bhandari is the widow of the charismatic UML leader Madan Bhandari. After her husband’s death in a jeep accident in 1993, she had risen to prominence and is now seen as a confidante of Oli.
Nepal’s first President Ram Baran Yadav represents the Madhesi community, which has been on the warpath saying the recently-promulgated constitution perpetuates their under-representation in all state organs.
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but she doesn’t support full citizenship rights for women…hence this is just a farce…
A transgender would have been the best choice in this situation. It would have found a place in the Guinness Book of Record too .
Nepal would then have surpassed the rest of the world as the first country to do so ( at least officially) in this score also.
Not an inspiring decision. Not just female, but being “some ones’s wife” was perhaps the over riding criteria. Think is yet another “criteria” if the rumour is to be believed.
Not an inspiring decision. Not just female, but being “some ones’s wife” was perhaps the over riding criteria. Think there is yet another “criteria” if the rumour is to be believed.