The delay in making the manifestos public has affected the parties´ election campaigns at local level. The parties have attributed the delay to the top leaders being tied up with the selection of candidates for the CA polls. [break]
“Normally, informed voters ask about our stance on federalism and other contentious issues. Since manifestos with the party´s official positions on such issues are yet to come out, we often face difficulty in explaining it to voters,” said NC first-past-the-post (FPTP) candidate from constituency number 2 of Mahottari district Kiran Yadav.
Yadav said she plans to expedite her election campaign from October 10. “Our party has floated seven-province model for a federal state. It will be formal once this is incorporated in the election manifestos,” she further said.
Yadav´s is just a case in point. Poll candidates from across parties are confronting a similar situation as majority of voters are eager to know stances of different parties on contentious issues, including the federalism.
Normally, parties are expected to publicize their election manifestos as soon as they file candidacies in the Election Commission (EC) to expedite election campaign at the local level.
But since the major parties are still struggling to finalize the candidates under proportional electoral system -- they have already submitted the list of FPTP candidates to the Election Commission (EC) on Thursday -- they are likely to take more time to make their election manifestos public.
Leaders belonging to the major parties, however, said they are almost close to finalizing their manifesto.
NC leader Badri Pandey said they have already prepared a preliminary draft of the election manifesto based on the suggestions given by the Central Working Committee (CWC) members and the Mahasamiti members. “The manifestos will be finalized in the next few days. They will reach to all districts immediately after Dashain festival is over,” he said.
UCPN (Maoist) leader Giriraj Mani Pokharel said the engagement of top leaders in the selection of poll candidates under the FPTP and proportional electoral system delayed the party´s plan to unveil manifesto in time. “We have almost completed nomination of poll candidates. Since we plan to publicize all poll candidates by tomorrow [Monday], we will then finalize the election manifesto,” said Pokharel.
Pokharel said that the party´s headquarters meeting scheduled for Monday will decide when to make the election manifesto public.
Similar is the case of CPN-UML. Though a five-member task force led by the party´s General Secretary Ishwar Pokharel prepared the draft manifesto, the party´s Secretary Yuvraj Gyawali said they are yet to finalize it. “Our Standing Committee will now deliberate on the draft manifesto and take a final call. We are planning to make it public at the earliest,” he said.
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