• CPN-UML calls it an unfortunate and regressive move • Says civic polls can't be held in 2023
KATHMANDU, JANUARY 21
The ruling alliance today reached a conclusion to hold all three tiers of elections -- parliamentary, provincial, and local -- together between mid-November 2022 and mid-March 2023.
According to CPN (Unified Socialist) leader Ganga Lal Tuladhar, who attended the ruling alliance's committee meeting today, coalition leaders reached a conclusion about holding all three types of elections together, since holding early general elections as proposed by CPN-MC leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal would entail dissolution of the House of Representatives which would go against the spirit of the Supreme Court verdict. The SC had ruled that the HoR could not be dissolved as long as there is a possibility of forming a new government. Tuladhar said that holding early parliamentary polls would give CPN- UML Chair KP Sharma Oli ammunition to blast the ruling alliance.
"As Oli has been saying that this Parliament cannot solve any problem and there should be fresh parliamentary polls, we cannot play into his hands by proposing to dissolve the HoR," Tuladhar added. He said the Election Commission's proposal to hold local polls in two phases on April 27 and May 5 was not in conformity with the provisions of Local Election Act, which stipulated that local polls should be held two months before the expiry of the tenure of local governments.
Had the EC stuck to Local Election Act, it should have proposed to hold polls around February-end so that new governments could be sworn in on March 5.
Tuladhar added that there was no clarity whether the election date or the swearing-in date should define the tenure of the existing local governments.
In 2017, local polls were held in three phases -- on May 13, June 28, and September 18, respectively. "If the EC counts the tenure of local representatives from 5 May 2017, keeping in mind the declaration of poll results, representatives elected in the second and third phase polls can rightly claim that their tenure of five years is not being honoured," Tuladhar added.
He said the ruling alliance even thought of moving a bill in the Parliament to amend the Local Election Act's provision that stipulated the local polls should be held two months before the expiry of the local government's tenure, to make the Act's provision compatible with the constitution, but due to continued obstruction of Parliamentary proceedings by the CPN- UML, passage of such a bill could not be ensured. The constitution stipulates that local elections can be held six months after the expiry of the local governments' tenure.
CPN-UML leader Agni Kharel said if the ruling alliance held all three tiers of elections simultaneously between November and March 2023 that would be an unfortunate and regressive move.
He said that local polls should be held within five years and if they were held in 2023 as suggested by the ruling alliance, that would violate the Local Election Act. He said the ruling alliance's decision to hold all three tiers of polls simultaneously was aimed at giving political benefit to left parties of the coalition which feared their defeat in the poll.
Rastriya Janamorcha lawmaker Durga Paudel said the meeting also decided to consult lawyers on how to deal with contradictory provisions of the Local Election Act and the constitution about the tenure of the local levels.
A version of this article appears in the print on January 22, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
