KATHMANDU: Chairman of CPN-UML KP Oli has said that if Parliament had not been dissolved on December 20, 2020, the party would have been destroyed.

On Tuesday, while speaking at the Bagmati province-level cadres training in Jorpati, Kathmandu, he defended the widely criticized move of dissolution of the Parliament as a just and timely decision.

“We recommended the dissolution of Parliament on December 20, 2020. We thought it was right. We did it right. It was ok and we did it. It should not have been done and we did it. We took very timely steps,” the UML chair said. “If we didn’t do this, our movement would have been destroyed. There was a plot to destroy it. The rope they prepared to hang us. We snatched it away. That’s what the move on the 5th of Pus is. We cut the rope that was made to kill us.”

He added that after the conspiracy was revealed, the then-party Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ was scared and was discouraged from hatching further conspiracies.

Oli claimed that despite the restoration of the House of Representatives, nothing was damaged and the attempt to destroy the party organization and the left-wing movement was thwarted.

After the ruling CPN reached the verge of a split as the then PM Oli did not abide by the internal bids made with party leaders then, Oli recommended the dissolution of the House of Representatives on December 20, 2020. However, the Supreme Court restored the House declaring Oli’s move unconstitutional on February 2021.

Oli also recommended the dissolution of Parliament in May 2021, the SC overturned his decision and directed to form government under Nepali Congress parliamentary party leader Sher Bahadur Deuba’s premiership.

Although UML Chair’s defense of the House dissolution became an apparently vital cause for the UML-Maoist Center alliance formed after the November elections last year, he still claimed that the dissolution of parliament was a political, parliamentary, and constitutional step.