At the end of a month-long deadline, a total of 139 political parties had registered with the Election Commission (EC) for the upcoming CA polls, nearly double the number of parties which had registered for the first CA polls back in 2008. Even so, there was one glaring omission this time around: Mohan Baidya-led CPN-Maoist. The radical leftist party has refused to join the electoral bandwagon under the ‘status quo’. Despite repeated attempts to convince it to enter the electoral process, it has not budged an inch, and continues to harp on unrealistic demands like scrapping of the 11-point political agreement and the 25-point constitutional amendment that cleared the way for CJ Khil Raj Regmi’s appointment as the executive head. It also wants the dissolution of the government, to be followed by a roundtable meeting to resolve all outstanding issues. This opt-out of one of the strong radical forces has put a question mark over credible election by the December deadline. [break]
But CPN-Maoist is far from the only hurdle towards polls. The Election Commission has expressed its displeasure at the political parties’ repeated failure to decide on the proposed amendments of the Election to Members of the Constituent Assembly (CA) Act, 2013. There are divisions both within and outside the four-party High Level Political Mechanism over some of the proposed points. The major bones of contention are new eligibility threshold for PR seat in new CA polls, downsizing the CA and barring candidates with criminal backgrounds from contesting election—all of which have been proposed in the new ordinance. Talking to Republica, Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety accused the parties of backtracking from an earlier understanding with the EC.
It appears that while EC was more or less able to take the Big Four into confidence on the proposed amendments, it struggled to convince the smaller parties that their interests would not be hampered by the one percent PR threshold and downsizing of the CA. If the EC believed that the consent of the Big Four would be enough to push ahead, it was mistaken. EC must be well aware that the upcoming polls are no ordinary elections, and it is important that every attempt be made to widen political participation in it. The HLPM would also be ill-advised to push through potentially controversial measures without consulting outside forces. There is a ray of hope: the deadline for party registration on Tuesday coincided with the formation of a HLPM taskforce to forge consensus on disputed issues by June 3. As we have repeatedly emphasized in this space, it is crucial that an election date be finalized at the earliest. The longer this takes, the more the skepticism over timely polls will grow. This in turn will allow the forces unhappy with post-2006 political changes to fish in muddy waters. The HLPM taskforce will hopefully arrive at some kind of agreement on the proposed amendments—but only in consultation with the outside political forces. The taskforce should enlist the opinions of these forces and make them feel involved in the whole process. Any attempt, real or perceived, to impose the decision of HLPM, a veritable ‘syndicate’ even for many of the members of its constituent parties, will hinder, not help, clear the way for credible polls.
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