NEPAL: KHANAL ELECTED UML GENERAL SECRETARY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 KATHMANDU 000557 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 05/16/2018 TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR KDEM NP SUBJECT: NEPAL: KHANAL ELECTED UML GENERAL SECRETARY Classified By: Classified By: Charge d'Affaires Randy W. Berry. Reason s 1.4 (b/d). Khanal Elected UML General Secretary -------------- ¶1. (C) On May 15, the Central Committee of Nepal's third-largest party, the center-left Communist Party of Nepal - United Marxist Leninist (UML),unanimously elected Foreign Department chief Jhalanath Khanal as General Secretary. Khanal, who had previously served in the party's TOP job from 1982-1989, defeated two rival candidates: former Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister K.P. Oli and Acting UML General Secretary Amrit Bohara. Khanal replaces Madhav Kumar Nepal, who had served as General Secretary since 1993, but who resigned after his party's poor (third-place) showing in the April 10 Constituent Assembly election. UML had anticipated placing first. M.K. Nepal lost in both constituencies -- in Kathmandu and the Terai (Rautahat) -- where he contested. In contrast, Khanal (unlike Oli, who was defeated, and Bohara, who did not contest in a first-past-the-post race) won a seat from Ilam, an eastern hill district. Bohara, who was M.K. Nepal's deputy, had been initially expected by many to serve as the Acting General Secretary until the UML general convention in the fall. Biographical Information -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Jhalanath Khanal, 58, entered politics while in school and was a founding member of the All Nepal Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (Marxist-Leninist). He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal (UML's predecessor party) from 1982 to 1989 when the party was underground. Khanal was appointed Minister for Agriculture, Land Reforms and Management, and Forests and Soil Conservation in the Interim Government formed on April 19, 1990 after democracy was restored. He was elected to Parliament from Ilam in the 1991 and 1994 elections, but narrowly lost in the 1999 election. Khanal was appointed to the Interim Parliament in January 2007 and won a directly elected seat from Ilam in the April 10, 2008 Constituent Assembly election. Khanal was elected to the party's Central Committee in 1998, and re-elected in 2003. He is Chief of the party's Foreign Department. Khanal was born on March 20, 1950 in Ilam to a Brahmin family. He received a B.A. in Political Science from Tribhuvan University in 1969. He is married to Ravi Laxmi Chitrakar, a physics professor, and has one son. Khanal visited the United States in 1993 on an International Visitors Program. He speaks English well and is a close Embassy contact. Khanal has represented the UML at dinners the Norwegian Ambassador has hosted for select diplomats, including the U.S. Ambassador, with a representative from the Maoists, the Nepali Congress and the UML. He is also one of UML's two members on the six-party working group preparing for the Constituent Assembly. Comment -------------- ¶3. (C) Some UML members have expressed dissatisfaction that the party did not follow its own internal procedures in electing Khanal on May 15, but M.K. Nepal signaled his support, after earlier reports that he opposed Khanal, by formally proposing his successor at the meeting. Barring a major gaffe, Khanal now has the upper hand to remain as General Secretary after the general convention, which is expected to be held in September or October. Khanal is known for being able to talk with and mediate between all factions of the party. He is likely to have more cordial relations with the Maoists than would have occurred had former Deputy Prime Minister Oli won the TOP slot. Khanal also indicated in a recent meeting with Emboff that his preference was for the UML to join a Maoist-led government -- if the Maoists met the UML conditions, including addressing rampant violence and intimidation by the Maoist Young Communist League, in many cases against UML cadres. As Khanal noted in his initial remarks after his victory, he is taking office during "the most challenging period" for his party. KATHMANDU 00000557 002 OF 002 BERRY