Nepali Congress (NC) central member Shekhar Koirala has said that failure to authenticate ordinance regarding National Assembly (NA) election is the first step of authoritarian rule in the country.

Speaking at a seminar organised by the Democratic Society Morang in Biratnagar on Tuesday, the NC leader claimed that the left alliance of the CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Centre) stood against the constitutional provision of inclusiveness. He said that the protest against the single transferable vote proposed in the ordinance was the left alliance’s attempt to end that provision.

Nepal lies between the two giants—one communist and the other committed to democracy, and the influence of one of them is increasing “unnaturally” in the recent time, Koirala said. “We have India on one side, while on the other, economically prosperous China is moving forward aggressively with an aim to expand its social, economic and political influence by 2050,” he said, questioning a recent visit by a Chinese team to Nepal immediately after the elections.

Cautioning against falling into a trap of any country, the NC leader urged everyone concerned to ponder the situation of Sri Lanka and the Maldives who took loans from China. He argued that Sri Lanka agreed to give a port and the Maldives an Island to China on lease after they could not pay off the loans.

On a different note, Koirala pointed out non-cooperation of some party members, weak election campaign in the media, failure to clarify the significance of the NC and Nepal Loktantrik Forum at the grassroots level among the major factors for his election loss in Morang-6. CPN-UML candidate Lal Babu Pandit defeated Koirala by 675 votes.