Speaking at an interaction program held in the capital on ´Upcoming election: challenges and opportunities´, Pokharel said adding a few amendments to the policies, laws, methodologies and processes prepared during the earlier CA election could have worked adequately for this time round, thus technically enabling the country to conduct elections in June.[break]
“As the parties did not show willingness to meet the deadline I fear that we will not get to see the election even on the next date,” he said. “However, there is still a ray of hope. The election is necessary not only to bring the country back onto the right track but at the same time to secure the future of the political parties, and if not the former, the latter reason should force the political leaders to have the election eventually.”
However, political analyst Krishna Khanal differed with Pokharel, stating that just technical preparations alone would not be enough for holding elections.
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“Election necessitates a kind of atmosphere and several other preparations besides the technical. It may not have been possible to hold the election in June, but it is certainly possible in November, and the current government has come with this single mandate,” he said.
Khanal further said that the postponement of the election to November was due to the CPN-UML and Nepali Congress, which had a simple calculation that the later the election the lesser in favor of the Maoists it would be.
Khanal further said that another important reason the election was needed was to break the syndicate of the four major political parties. “The big parties should either become much broader or their syndicate must be broken,” he said.
Similarly, he maintained that the process of democracy was lethargic and this had to be tolerated. “If we want a democratic society we should not become fed up with this very nature of democracy” he added.
Constitutional expert Bhimarjun Acharya lamented that Nepal had followed the model of Bhutan in making the chief justice the cabinet chairman, and this was extremely unfortunate.
He opined that the intention of the parties was more important than the election. “Intention is more important than anything else,” he said.
Meanwhile, analyzing several aspects of the past and present socio-political context, former chief election commissioner Pokharel maintained that the country was in an unusual phase and this called for unusual efforts to resolve the impasse.
“Realizing this, all the political forces and other stakeholders should be very careful in institutionalizing past achievements and paving the way for a brighter future. The situation is that the glass is already broken; let´s realize this and act accordingly,” he urged.
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