The political parties in power should not misinterpret the legal provisions, simply to serve their political interest

The ongoing discussion among the ruling coalition partners on the timing of holding the elections of the three tiers of government – parliamentary, provincial and local level – is unnecessary, and it goes against the letter and spirit of the laws governing the three types of elections. The coalition partners are also misinterpreting the constitution and the laws, especially the Local Election Act, which clearly states that the local elections must be held two months before the expiry of the five-year term of the local level.

As per the Local Election Act, the five-year term of the local level is going to expire on May 5, and the law clearly states that the local level cannot remain in a vacuum even for a single day. It means that the government has no option other than to announce the date(s) of the local election around April 27 and May 5 as suggested by the Election Commission (EC).

Counting of the five-year term of the local level starts from the first date of its election even though the election was held in phases. The last local elections were held in three phases – on May 13, June 28 and September 18 – spanning four months. However, while addressing the nation three days ago, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba asked the concerned agencies to make preparations for the elections of the three tiers of government, raising an eyebrow about the government's intention.

The sole motive behind proposing the postponement of holding the local elections by six months or holding the parliamentary elections before the local level polls is to keep the unity of the coalition partners intact.

This proposal has been floated mainly by the CPN-Maoist Centre and CPN-Unified Socialist Party, led by Prachanda and Madhav Kumar Nepal, respectively. Both of them fear that their coalition could disintegrate should the local elections take place before the federal elections. Even if they want to hold the parliamentary elections before the local level polls, the Supreme Court verdict has clearly stated that the federal parliament should complete its full five-year term, which expires only in mid-November when the federal and provincial elections were held in 2017.

The political parties in power should not misinterpret the constitutional and legal provisions, which were put in place after careful deliberations, simply to serve their vested political interest. While drafting the law with regard to the local level, the political parties had agreed that the local level should not remain in a vacuum even for a single day to make it fully functional at the grassroots level. Nor are there legal provisions that allow the government to announce the dates of all three tiers of government at once. It would also be impossible for the EC to make preparations for holding elections of all levels, and voters will also get confused as they will have to cast votes for many posts at once. It is the responsibility of the EC to conduct the elections in a time-bound manner as required by the laws. So, the ECshould be given the constitutional power to declare the election dates for all three tiers of government on its own. The EC has been lobbying hard for changes in the existing constitutional provisions that do not allow it to declare the elections date(s) independently, but to no avail.


Social inclusion policy

Since multi-party democracy was ushered into the country in 1990, catch words like social inclusion, equitable development and gender balance have been used once too often to denote a new society in the making, and they have gained greater currency with the promulgation of the new constitution in 2015. Yet the status of the marginalised communities, Dalits, differently-disabled, women and children have only slightly improved outside the urban centres.

This has happened largely because the different political parties have paid only lip service to creating an equitable society where everyone has access to especially economic, health and education sectors without any discrimination.

Now the federal government has developed a model 'Social Inclusion Policy, 2022' for the local levels in an attempt to build an equitable society by strengthening the economically and socially backward groups. It has worked out five strategies, with each having its own working policies and target programmes.

While only time will tell how effective these strategies have been, the focus should be on the promotion of good education, the great equaliser, at the local levels to create opportunities for all.

A version of this article appears in the print on January 24, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.