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KATHMANDU: Nepal's lawmakers lined up to vote Monday in a run-off to elect the country's first president, a vital step to ending weeks of political deadlock following abolition of the monarchy here.
The selection of a first post-royal head of state could bring Nepal's Maoists, who hold the most seats in a recently elected assembly but do not have a majority, a step closer to finally forming a government.
In an earlier vote Saturday, in the Himalayan nation's recently elected constitutional assembly, no candidate won the 298 votes necessary to win the country's top-ranked post.
Hectic parleys continued early Monday, with the Maoists convening a meeting of their top leaders till minutes before the vote was due to begin.
The country has been stuck in political limbo since the assembly, which will write a new constitution for Nepal, sacked unpopular king Gyanendra and abolished the 240-year-old Hindu monarchy in a landmark meeting on May 28.
Interim Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has since resigned, but with no one in power to accept his resignation, the elderly centrist has lingered on as a weak caretaker.
Political parties have squabbled for weeks over who should get the largely ceremonial post, who will take over some of the duties previously performed by ousted autocratic king Gyanendra.
The three main parties, who are also leading a two-year-old peace process that saw the Maoist rebels lay down their arms after a decade-long struggle for a republic, had hoped to select a president by consensus.
But political infighting led to a falling out and to the assembly's presidential election.
The candidate with the biggest number of votes was Ram Baran Yadav, who won 283 votes.
Diehard Republican Ramraja Prasad Singh, the candidate backed by the Maoists though not a member of the party, won 270 votes.
A candidate fielded by Nepal's third main party won no votes, leaving Yadav and Singh to face off Monday.
Both candidates are ethnic Mahadhesis who hail from the troubled lowland area bordering India known as the Terai, where demands for an autonomous federal state have seen frequent deadly clashes.
Nepali media picked Yadav, fielded by the country's oldest political party, the centrist Nepali Congress, as the likely winner Monday.
- AFP/yb
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