The failure of the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to resolve

the issues of pre-CA republican declaration and full proportional representation threatens the very peace process. The meeting of the three major political parties was going on at Baluwatar by the time this page went to press yesterday. Today is the day, already extended by five days, for the submission of the closed list of the candidates to the Election Commission. Therefore, the logical though unhappy conclusion one has to make is the inevitable postponement of the constituent assembly (CA) elections, slated for November 22, once more. However, one can only hope that the present impasse does not produce disastrous consequences for the country. The Maoists, in their new flexibility, wanted at least one of their two central demands fully met and the other modified. But Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, too, relented so far as to agree to the idea of a parliamentary resolution for a republic. As for the other five parties, they took a middle course; for them, either the Congress or the Maoist line would be all right; so also for the voters.

But no party was willing to take the main blame for any further postponement of the polls. But each of the major parties should also understand that the success of the peace process is much more important than the loss or gain of just a few seats for it through one or the other electoral system. And the CA polls are central to the ongoing conflict management. The Maoists proposed two alternatives. One was the combination of a republican declaration and a modification to the first-past-the-post system to give it a proportional character by ensuring ‘proper’ representation of Madhesis, Dalits, ethnic communities, women, and backward regions. The other was the mixture of full proportionality and a parliamentary republican resolution to be endorsed by the CA.

Both the Maoists and the Congress, particularly Koirala, would be blamed for any failure to hold the elections on schedule. The responsibility of Koirala is generally thought to be even greater, as Koirala himself has said time and again — he has been entrusted with the leadership of the interim government; the responsibility of integrating the Maoists completely into peaceful democratic politics rests more with him than with any other political leader; the failure would present him with the moral dilemma of whether to continue as head of the government; and, no less important, the seven party row may have considerable negative impact on the peace process, thus giving the forces of regression a further opportunity to try to reverse the present political course. Koirala may have various compulsions as regards republic declaration. But on full proportionality, he seems to have none, except that it might reduce a few of the many seats the Congress would win, with its share of about one-third of the popular vote. Such narrow electoral calculations by major political parties at such a crucial time for the nation are indeed sad, all the more so by one with a proven popular base.