Apart from laws, public awareness is a must to ensure free, fair and impartial elections
Election campaigns in Nepal have become more and more expensive with each passing election. The people and the political parties who lack deep pockets cannot think of contesting the local, provincial or federal elections due to high cost of the campaigns.
Democracy cannot take firm root unless the law governing the election process provides a level playing field to all – rich or poor. In principle, elections should be contested based on the ideology and economic or development agenda of a given political party or an independent candidate. The existing law has set certain criteria under which a candidate can spend within the ceiling fixed by the Election Commission.
However, election experts, including former EC commissioners, believe that candidates spend much more than the ceiling set by the EC. The candidates do so because of the loopholes in the existing law. Even the EC, which is responsible for monitoring the election expenditure of a candidate, is unable to take legal action against anyone who spends more than the fixed amount. This happens as the candidates are not required to follow the banking channel or declare the sources of their election funding. One former EC chief has said that 75 per cent of the population was not in a position to contest the elections.
The existing election sending ceiling fixed by the EC is also impractical. The current expenditure ceiling should be scrapped while there should be provision of heavy penalties should someone spend more than the ceiling fixed. One of the biggest problems is that the political parties receive billions of rupees from business groups or individuals from out of the banking channel, mostly from not-known sources of income. In order to control heavy spending during the elections, the existing law should be amended, allowing the Office of the Auditor General to audit the accounts of the political parties and their candidates. But the political parties in power must be ready to amend the laws as suggested by the EC.
The level of public awareness is, however, more important than the election laws. Due to the prevalence of social media, money and muscle alone cannot help win an election today. The local level and the November 20 general elections have, to some extent, proven that money and muscle alone do not influence the election outcome. The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and other regional parties, which were not financially as strong as the established political parties, emerged as alternative political forces due to their honest commitment to ending corruption and ensuring good governance.
Only honesty, sincerity and a strong commitment to deliver prompt services to the people will win the hearts and minds of the electorate. The mandatory provision of voter identity card before taking part in the election process has also discouraged the candidates from manipulating the elections. However, the election law must be changed to reveal which candidate got how much money from which source, and where the candidate spent the money. The law should also bar a candidate from contesting the next election if s/he is found guilty of raising money illegally and spending it on purposes other than specified by the law. Public awareness is a must to ensure free, fair and impartial elections.
Reduce HoR size
National Assembly member Khimlal Devkota has demanded reducing the number of members in the House of Representatives and the provincial assemblies. All commoners would agree. For a country the size of Nepal, why does Nepal need 275 HoR and 550 provincial assembly members? Devkota has suggested that 165 HoR members and 330 members in the provinces would do. At a time when voices are being raised against the federal system, which is becoming financially burdensome, it would indeed be wise to start debating about the right size for the House and provincial assemblies. The coffers are said to be near empty, with no money to spare for development activities in the forthcoming budget.
The recent by-elections that gave the Rastriya Swatantra Party a thumping victory in two of the three constituencies have sent a clear message to the mainstream parties that the people are not happy with their way of running the state's affairs. The constant delay in forming the government and making appointments to constitutional bodies and public organisations based on vagbandha, or power-sharing among the parties, has frustrated the common man. As Devkota has suggested, their appointments should be based on a set of rules.
A version of this article appears in the print on April 28, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
