After the unceremonious demise of the Constituent Assembly last May, people are eagerly waiting to elect a new assembly to complete the task of writing the constitution of the new federal democratic republican Nepal. It is hard to overemphasize the importance of new CA polls. At the same time, it will be dangerous to downplay the vital role of arguably an equally important electoral exercise: the local level election. The country has been without a legislature for 10 months; it has gone without local elected bodies for 11 years after Sher Bahadur Deuba dismissed the last elected local bodies in 2002. Since, the local bodies were being run by all party mechanisms (APMs) until last year, when APMs were dissolved on the recommendation of the CIAA, the country’s chief anti-graft body, which found rampant irregularities in the mechanisms.
The situation now is even worse. Although formal APMs have been dissolved, development funds are still handled by local-level political operatives under various informal setups. This informality has made misappropriation of funds easier. Since unelected political representatives are not accountable to the people, they are losing touch with the grassroots, a dangerous development for a democracy. Most of the Nepalis struggling to earn their livelihood are little bothered about who holds the reins of government at the center.
They are more concerned about who controls the local bodies, which can make a meaningful difference in their lives. As such, local bodies are people’s first (and often only) point of contact with the government. If these vital institutions are rendered dysfunctional, people might, ultimately, get disillusioned of the actors who are depriving them of their right to self-governance.
National level politicians do not want local polls because elected local officials will have to be more accountable to the public, drying up a steady source of income. This is the reason there seems to be little or no political appetite for local level polls. Given this political collusion to delay local polls, last year the Supreme Court had ordered the then government to hold local election at the earliest. The plaintiffs to the case had rightly argued that operating local bodies through handpicked political operatives went against democratic principles. The verdict has been conveniently ignored in the cacophony surrounding new CA polls.
Of late, there have been indications by the Election Commission that new CA polls by June are now unlikely, given the lack of homework on various fronts. Although June election is still the most desirable outcome, if indeed the election is to be pushed to November, the political parties should seriously explore the possibility of conducting CA polls and local election at one go.
With more than seven months at hand, it should not be that hard—if the parties can, for once, rise above their petty interests. But irrespective of when the next CA polls are held, any justification for pushing back local level election rests on shaky ground. Some believe that it will be futile to hold local polls when the country is on the brink of adopting a new federal model, which will entail redrawing of old boundaries. But between the election of new CA and implementation of new constitution, at least another four or five years will elapse. It will be cruel (and undemocratic) to deprive people of their right to accountable governance for such a long time.
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