SURKHET, NOVEMBER 28
There will be no representation of women under the first-pastthe-post election system in Karnali Provinial Assembly as no woman won the election.
Major political parties - the Nepali Congress, CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre - did not field women candidates for the PA election. But, Nepal Workers and Peasants Party fielded three female candidates: Manakali Ramjali from Surkhet-1B, Bijukala Rana from Surkhet-2A, and Laxmi Kumari Singh from the Dailekh-1B. They finished with 63, 306 and 202 votes respectively losing the elections.
Likewise, just a single Dalit candidate has been elected under the first-past-the-post system in the province. Rana Singh Pariyar of the CPN-Maoist Centre is the only Dalit who has won the recently held PA elections from Humla-1A to represent his community in the PA.
He defeated independent candidate Mangal Bahadur Shahi by a margin of 1,851 votes. He secured 6,481 votes against Shahi's 4,630 votes. Most of the political parties here did not feel it necessary to give tickets to Dalits in the elections. The understanding of rights activist Pabitra Shahi is that the parties with chances to win the election didn't give opportunity to women.
"Preventing women from competing under the first-past-the-post system, and discouraging their participation and leadership in politics under any circumstances is against the constitution," the rights activist said, asserting the need to raise this issue strongly in the days ahead.
The assessment of CPN-Maoist Centre's Karnali Province Chair Bimala KC is that women are equally capable of winning the FPTP elections. "We see the nationwide scenario, women got tickets under the direct election system, but it was not encouraging and not in line with the constitutional provisions. In the case of Karnali PA, political parties did a great injustice to half of the population by depriving them of the chance to compete in the elections."
According to the Election Commission's data, in the province, the UML has so far got 183,950 votes under the proportional representation system followed by the NC (170,765), CPN- MC(137,629), CPN (Unified Socialist) (35,826), Rastriya Prajatantra Party (25,186), NWPP (8,993) and CPN-ML (3,019).
Other political parties have obtained less than 2,000 votes.
In Karnali, political parties have so far secured 576,000 votes in total. Under the FPTP, all the elected candidates are male.
The 40-member PA is constitutionally mandated to ensure 33 per cent participation of women, and it seems 13 women will be elected under the PR system.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 29, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
