The office-bearers must live up to the people's expectations and take impartial and fair actions as per the legal provisions
At a time when the Election Commission of Nepal (ECN) has been drawing flak from the opposition political parties and legal experts for its inaction to decide on the cases filed by rival factions of some political parties for official recognition, the constitutional body has issued a code of conduct for its office-bearers.
Some of the office-bearers or commissioners have been nominated by the Constitutional Council (CC) by making an amendment to the Constitutional Council Act (CCA) through an ordinance when the federal parliament was in recess or when it was dissolved. As per the amended CCA, majority of the members of the 6-member CC can take decisions to appoint chairs and members of the constitutional bodies and ambassadors. Recently, the government appointed as many as 20 persons in various constitutional bodies, including two members in the ECN, without them having to go through a parliamentary hearing as the House of Representatives was dissolved for the second time on May 22. A case has been filed at the Supreme Court challenging the government's decision to appoint them in the constitutional bodies without fulfilling the mandatory parliamentary hearing.
The ECN has issued the "Code of Conduct for ECN Officer-bearers, 2021" to ensure their involvement in managing and conducting elections in a free, independent, impartial, credible, transparent and economical manner, while enhancing the people's faith in the election system.
The code requires them to perform their duties and responsibilities in relation to election management independently without being carried away or intimidated by undue pressure, temptation, prejudice and threat. It also requires them to stay away from the influence of political parties involved in disputes over the claim of party leadership or their authenticity. The ECN is quite often accused of being biased against factions of the political parties that are opposed to the government. This became evident when the ECN office-bearers could not decide on which of the factions of the then Nepal Communist Party (NCP) and Janata Samajbadi Party were legitimate to lay claims on the leadership of the parties.
It has also barred the office-bearers from discriminating against any political party, election candidates, agency and stakeholders. However, issuing the code of conduct for the office-bearers is not enough.
They must live up to the people's expectations and take impartial legal actions as per the legal provisions on matters related to legitimate claims lodged by the political parties. The then CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist Centre would not have unified as the NCP had the ECN firmly told both of them that they had no right to lay claim over the NCP as it had already been registered with the ECN in some other's name. In a democratic system, all persons in the constitutional bodies are appointed by the political parties in the government and opposition to make them function independently.
But once a person is appointed to the post, s/he is expected to discharge his/her duty independently and as per the legal and constitutional provisions. But, sad to say, they always remain loyal to those who have helped them get the posts.
KMC's resolve
The Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) has shown its resolve to remove the bus park from Khula Manch for good from Tuesday. With its new bus park and a view tower under construction just across the street, the vast open ground next to Ratna Park was being used as a bus park with multiple bus stops for vehicles to pick up or drop passengers. The bus park has been there temporarily at Khula Manch for years now, becoming an eye sore with buses, shops and vendors operating haphazardly and heaps of construction materials piled everywhere.
Now that the gate to Khula Manch has been closed, buses must now drive around it to pick up passengers.
This has greatly annoyed the public vehicles that began plying the roads only from Tuesday, following a relaxation in the prohibitory orders, as there is no place for them to park their vehicles for long.
Bus operators are trying to put pressure on the local authorities, saying this will hurt their business as they used to pick up half their passengers from Khula Manch. The KMC, however, cannot afford to back away from its decision as it must keep its word it gave to the Kathmandu locals, right activists and other stakeholders some months back.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 1 2021, of The Himalayan Times.
