The cost consideration of staffing a democratic government, including choosing a legislature, should, indeed, be the key consideration for a low-income country like Nepal that continues to struggle to escape poverty. In a country facing an alarming level of economic hard times, democracy can’t be an open-ended choice, meaning that the country cannot spend just about any amount needed to sustain a democratic system.[break]
In this context, how much will the CA election scheduled for November 19 cost to nation’s Treasury and to the general population? No estimates are available except that the 2013/14 government budget has allocated Rs 16 billion for election-related expenses.
For national economy consideration, we need to take into account other direct and indirect costs of the election as well. There is very little prior information available on which we can build a comprehensive estimate of election costs but a rough guess can nonetheless be made.
As per the latest estimate, there are 6,128 candidates standing for direct election representing over 100 parties. Candidates from large parties are usually well-funded, especially if they have won elections previously and held ministerial positions. Those representing small and new parties are less well-funded and also have much lower level of support from families and friends and from parties they are associated with.
Using a heavy dose of conjectures and commonsense, the total cost for 6,128 candidates in the direct election comes to Rs 12.4 billion, comprising own resources, support from families and friends and party support. For proportional election candidates who number 11,000, direct costs total Rs 1.3 billion. To these two categories of expenditures we need to add the amounts spent by party offices, both at central and district levels. This comes to Rs 3.2 billion. Altogether, direct election expenses under the above three categories amount to Rs 16.9 billion, a bit more than Rs 16 billion budget allocation.
One category of cost that is missed by pollsters and election managers is the opportunity cost that is not paid for but, nonetheless, is incurred by the economy, in terms of work and earning opportunities missed by candidates, election workers and family members. Also, there is considerable media coverage—television, radio and newspaper—that make use of manpower and capital that could have been used for productive efforts on farms, in factories and for self-employment.
Although the candidates consider such no-pay or volunteering part of support as free good, this involves real cost to the economy when half a million eligible workers stay away from their regular jobs for an extended period to help out in the election effort. The opportunity cost of the use of such “free labor” and of media time that could have been used for non-election coverage (apparently more productive than gathering and reporting of election news) is about Rs 5 billion.
Adding up all these three categories of election-related expenses, the total comes to Rs 37.9 billion which, expressed in relative terms, is approximately 2.5 percent of country’s GDP. Is this amount high, low, or just about right? This we can judge comparing election costs in some other well-known countries practicing electoral politics.
The most reliable estimate of election expenses is that of the United States where US $5.8 billion was spent in the 2012 election, presidential and congressional combined. At first glance, the amount appears very high but not so if we view this in terms of GDP—it comes to just 0.036 percent of GDP, or about 70 times lower than the same figure for Nepal.
The US figure doesn’t include opportunity cost of the election while it is included for Nepal. But opportunity cost of election in developed countries like US is substantially lower than for underdeveloped ones like Nepal since large election rallies and huge numbers of people working as campaign workers are rarely observed in these countries. Also, US elections are fought between just two parties, not among hundreds as in Nepal, Bangladesh and India.
In parliamentary democracies practiced in advanced countries like Canada and United Kingdom, election cost per capita or in terms of GDP is substantially lower than in the US. For example, in the most recent polls, election cost in Canada averaged US $8 per person, and for United Kingdom, it was a mere US $0.8. Using the above estimate of the election cost for Nepal, the comparable figure would be US $14 per person, paralleling the US.
Is such a high cost of election justified and, more generally, do we need to practice democracy in an opened-ended manner in which only sky is the limit? The answer is a definite no—whether we practice democracy or any other form of government. There are many reasons for being skeptical about the usefulness of spending such huge amounts of our scarce resources for any election, much less for an election that is unlikely to produce the desired result.
Even if we assume that it is necessary to go this route to write a constitution, that constitution will not be worth it if we have to spend close to half a billion dollars for it. We must appreciate the fact that the resources we commit to an election such as this one use our scarce saving that can be invested in producing life’s essentials for a sizable section of the deprived population.
Also, we can’t be ignorant or dismissive of social cost of the election. We can’t maintain democratic order if we allow everyone to form his or her own party. Democracy is meant to promote group interests, not those of the individuals who simply want to gang up to prey upon the society. Many parties at fray have no other ideology or commonality of interests except carving out their space to sustain personal power.
The quest for personal power and safeguarding of personal clout underlay divisions and sub-divisions we have observed in the Madhesi parties. Their justification that they had to do so to better serve Madhesi people is dishonest.
Almost all existing parties fit such categorization—they are in the election fray just to pursue their own interests, not an ideology or to look after the larger interests of the society In fact, why should individuals with localized interests be allowed to form a party in the first place if they do not have a justifiable national agenda?
Besides the number of parties allowed to contest the election with doubtful national agenda, the other key consideration is the cost of governance if such a multitude of parties are accommodated in the national legislature which, decidedly, is the intent of having 600 plus electoral seats and introduction of the proportional system.
On the other hand, if the purpose of the election was to promote democracy and strengthen representation, this could have been done with no larger than 100-size legislature, with all seats filled by direct election.
Not only would a smaller legislature help establish stronger and accountable governance, such downsizing could also help cut election cost and upkeep cost of the legislature to a fraction of what we are in line to pay. Among other things, such a big legislature would need a comparable government which will gobble up resources that could be used more productively elsewhere.
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