Former supporter slaps chief of Nepal's ruling party

KATHMANDU: The chief of Nepal's ruling party and former information and communications minister on Thursday became the first politician to pay the penalty for keeping the nation mired in failures and crises with a former supporter slapping him during a public programme.
Jhalanath Khanal, general secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, and one of the leaders of the communist and pro-democracy movements in Nepal, was slapped in Itahari town in southern Nepal while he was welcoming the entry of other party defectors in his own organisation.The attacker, Devi Prasad Regmi, told police after he was taken into custody that he was angered by the sight of Khanal, whom he blamed along with other politicians for ruining the country.
Though Khanal's party condemned the incident, public patience with the parties is wearing dangerously thin after their failure to form a new government even more than six months after prime minister Madhav Kumar Nepal resigned. The deadline given by President Ram Baran Yadav to the 28 parliamentary parties to form a consensus government ends on Friday and yet, there's no sign of an agreement. Khanal's party, its ally the Nepali Congress, and the opposition Maoists still remain embroiled in a battle for power.
Khanal's image became tarnished after he sided with the Maoists last year and forced the prime minister to resign so that he could become the new premier. The 16 rounds of futile election that Nepal suffered to choose a new PM also failed partly because Khanal directed his party MPs to abstain from voting since he could not contest the poll himself.