Just as in the 2008 elections,
international election observers have parachuted into Nepal. They can be seen at the domestic terminal with their local guides waiting for flights to various corners of the country.
Election tourism was the order of the day in 2008, too. And even though the Maoist party rode roughshod over voting, observer-in-chief
Jimmy Carter instantaneously gave the polls his official seal of approval. Even observers who observed irregularities were muted.
This time around, the drama will be heightened because perfidious politicians who have taken the people for granted will be going back to the people to beg, buy or threaten them to vote for them again. All this is being supervised by an effete government led by a chief justice who wears two hats. His government is the hapless rubber stamp of the four party syndicate, otherwise reverentially known as the High Level Political Committee.
If we were forced to dismantle the fundamental democratic principle of separation of powers, then we should at least expect leadership with vision, statesmanship, and independence. Chairman Khil Raj Regmi heaves like the puppet he is and the rare instance when he shows decisiveness, it is to insist on travelling to New York for the
UN General Assembly despite an uproar.
But nowhere is his pitiable weakness more resoundingly betrayed than in allowing a murderer convicted during his own tenure as chief justice of the Supreme Court to not just walk free, but to contest the November election from the very district where he was involved in a cold blooded murder.
The CA1 turned out to be a symbol of incompetence and dishonesty of elected representatives: a bloated 601 member proxy assembly that was whipped into submission by the main parties. Following criticism, the HLPC had agreed to shrink the CA2 to 491 members which, although still king-size, was an improvement. However, the feckless HLPC gave into a rump Madhesi party’s demand to increase it to 585 and a week later, a ‘socialist’ party insisted on 601 as conditions for taking part in elections. So
back to 601.
This sinister numbers game was preceded by them successfully ganging up against the Election Commission which wanted a threshold for parties to be represented in the CA under the proportional category. The EC just wanted to make sure that it could keep the number of parties at a manageable level. The EC was blackmailed by a handful of crooks masquerading as politicians holding the country ransom.
By enlarging the membership to a ridiculous 601 members and by doing away with the ballot threshold, the 150 registered parties have been trying to be assured of at least a few seats for themselves in the reincarnated jumbo CA. In its earlier avatar the CA1 included many who sold their red passports, were convicted killers, kidnappers, or were simply corrupt.
Since it doesn’t look like anything is changing this time around and given the calibre and credentials of the candidates, Nepal’s democracy, for all practical purposes, will continue to be a government of the
crooks, for the crooks, but voted by the people.
Back in an election in 1999, then Chief Election Commissioner Bishnu Pratap Shah, in sheer exasperation for the sordid reputation of candidates in the fray had questioned the relevance of a ‘free and fair election’ if the choice for the voters happens to be between smugglers and dacoits. Fifteen years down the road, the question resonates even louder with the people. So one wonders, what good will thousands of national and international
election observation tourists do to contribute to the building of democracy in Nepal in the real sense of the term?
Read also:
Torpor and turpitude, EDITORIAL