NEPAL: CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY MEMBERS SWORN IN

UNCLAS KATHMANDU 000593 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KDEM NP SUBJECT: NEPAL: CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY MEMBERS SWORN IN Constituent Assembly Sworn In -------------- ¶1. (U) Beginning at 2:00 p.m. local time, on May 27, 567 persons elected in Nepal's historic April 10 election were sworn in as members of what will be a 601-member Constituent Assembly (CA). The ceremony, took place in Kathmandu's Birendra International Conference Center (BICC),which will be the Assembly seat. The second oldest member of the Assembly, Nepali Congress (NC) Member of Parliament Kul Bahadur Gurung, 73, from Ilam district in eastern Nepal, took the oath of office first and then administered the oath to the other members. The oath was taken in more than 40 languages, but all members had to sign a copy of the oath in Nepali. Prime Minister -- and acting head of state -- G.P. Koirala, who was elected on the NC's proportional representation list, is 83, but the parties agreed that he should not also be the Chair of the Assembly. The day, however, did not go off without incident. A late afternoon socket bomb explosion at Ratna Park in downtown Kathmandu reportedly injured five. Civil society groups are organizing an event in the park on May 28 to celebrate the expected declaration of a republic at the first meeting of the Assembly. Ranabir Sena, a little-known Hindu fundamentalist group, has claimed responsibility for the blast as well as two socket bomb explosions on May 26 outside the BICC. Thirty-three Vacancies -------------- ¶2. (U) Thirty-three seats in the Assembly are vacant. The parties have yet to reach agreement on the 26 seats to be appointed by the cabinet, but the formula under consideration would allocate those seats to the largest parties in the CA roughly on the basis of their relative strength. The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) would get 9 seats, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal - United Marxist Leninist 5 each, with the remaining 7 divided among the fourth to ninth largest parties. Five seats are vacant because of the need for by-elections where candidates won in two constituencies. In two cases, elections were held but the CA Court has stayed the certification of the winning candidate and barred the purported winners from taking their seats. (In one case, the margin of victory was only 21 votes while in the other vote rigging has been alleged as some wards reported more votes cast than registered voters.) Finally, one of the CA's two independent candidates, Baban Singh, faces arrest on several murder cases. His failure to attend the ceremony was not unexpected. POWELL