The leaders aired their views at a meeting of the 27-party mechanism held to discuss the contentious issues in constitution writing. The mechanism Thursday deliberated on the system of governance and electoral model to be adopted in the new constitution.[break]
Some political parties have proposed that a provision be included to make it mandatory that any party must secure three percent of the total votes cast across the country in a general election to get the recognition as a national political party.
"Leaders from almost all the small political parties present at the meeting objected to the idea of imposing the three-percent threshold," Chitra Bahadur KC, the chief of Rastriya Janamorcha, told Republica.
There was a similar provision of three percent threshold in the 1990 Constitution. If any political party fails to get the recognition, the party will not be entitled to the state facilities provided to a national political party.
"The recognition makes a significant difference for a political party also because the general public and the diplomatic communities deal with the party accordingly," said a leader from a fringe party.
Candidates from such parties have to contest the elections as independents because the Election Commission doesn´t provide election symbols to such parties.
"This is a policy intended to suppress small parties and impose monopoly by few big ones," KC said. He added that being a big party doesn´t necessarily mean being a better party. "Even a small organization can fight for good cause. So our view is that all parties should be allowed to flourish," he added.
At the meeting, leaders also aired their views on the model of political systems -- presidential or prime ministerial -- and the electoral systems to be adopted in the new statute.
While UCPN (Maoist) is for adopting executive presidential system with unicameral parliament, Nepali Congress (NC) is for Westminster model and the CPN-UML is for electing executive prime minister directly from the people. Small parties are also divided on the models.
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