Three agonizing months after the formation of Khil Raj Regmi government, a date for new Constituent Assembly polls has finally been announced, to the relief of the majority of the people who had started to lose their patience. Although the Election Commission has been working on the technical nitty-gritty of new polls for the last three months, only now will election preparations begin in earnest. [break]
Till the government’s announcement of November 19 as the new election date on Thursday, skepticism about the real intent of the CJ-led government and its chief backers in the High Level Political Committee (HLPC) had been steadily growing. A sizable section of the populace believed that since none of the major parties was prepared for polls, they would try to delay election until the situation turned in their favor. There might have been a degree of truth in that belief. The new poll announcement might have come as each of the Big Four has started to genuinely believe that its election prospects are brightening. Or they might have realized that they could no longer defer polls in the face of mounting pressure from the public, media, civil society and international actors. Whatever the case, we wholeheartedly welcome the poll breakthrough.
But make no mistake: the announcement of a new date is only the beginning. It is admirable that the big parties were able to come to tentative agreements on contentious election-related issues like size of the new CA, the PR threshold and barring candidates with criminal backgrounds, even though the final decision was left to the CJ-led government. The size of the jumbo 601-strong CA has rightly been reduced to a more manageable 491, in line with popular expectations. The government has also done the right thing by removing the proposed PR threshold, as it would have barred members of minority communities of their rightful place in the new CA. The decision to keep only those prospective candidates who have been convicted in a court of law away from election fray, rather than restricting all those facing criminal charges from conflict-era, which would have been especially hard on UCPN (Maoist), suggest a level of accommodation that will be vital in the lead up to the new polls. All in all, there is not much to complain about the revised election-related ordinance.
Now the first call of duty of both the government as well as the HLPC should be to bring the dissenting forces that have been opposing the Regmi government on board. Save for Mohan Baidya-led CPN-Maoist, which continues to stick to its demand of resignation of the CJ-led government and its replacement with a political government, it should not be very difficult to get other major dissenting forces like the Ashok Rai-led FSPN and Upendra Yadav-led FDF on board.
It is up to the government and the HLPC to convince them that the announcement of the long-delayed polls is in the interest of all democratic forces, and equally importantly, that the current government will be able to deliver free and fair election. Nepali people have had to wait for over 60 long years to fulfill their dream of writing their own constitution through the Constituent Assembly. Wednesday’s announcement is a small but very meaningful step towards that great goal.
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