Himal Press 
CPN (Maoist Center) Chairperson Pushpa Kamal Dahal
KATHMANDU: CPN (Maoist Center) Chairperson and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has linked the demands of the Gen Z movement with his party’s long-standing dissenting positions.
In a message issued on the eve the Constitution Day on Thursday, Dahal claimed that the demands of Gen Z protesters echo the differing views his party had raised during the Constituent Assembly process a decade ago.
According to him, while compromises had to be made in the Constituent Assembly due to a lack of numbers, the dissenting views were formally recorded in history. “I only want to remind Gen Z protesters today that the dissenting voices we registered 10 years ago and the demands being raised now have striking similarities,” he said.
Dahal pointed out that the Gen Z demand for a directly elected executive was the Maoist party’s key point of dissent at the time. “We wanted to dismantle the current electoral system where money flows like a river and ordinary citizens cannot even imagine contesting elections. We stood for a fully proportional representation system,” he said.
Dahal argued that had those differing views been implemented then, today’s youth would not have been pushed into revolt or bloodshed.
He also blamed the Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN-UML for ignoring calls for change. “Since these traditional parties did not listen to the voice of transformation, the country paid a heavy price during the decade-long people’s war and once again in the Gen Z uprising,” he said.
He further described the Gen-Z movement as a continuation of the agendas that the Maoist revolution had failed to accomplish at the negotiating table.
Claiming that the Maoist Center was the first political force to support the demands of the Gen-Z movement, Dahal said that his party had called for the resignation of then Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on the evening of September 8 itself.
“Although we do not support the dissolution of the House of Representatives, we played a clear role in facilitating the formation of an interim government in coordination with the President,” Dahal added.
