Ultimately, the interim constitution was signed on December 16, 2006, by all the eight political parties, including the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) which had participated in the last people’s movement. It is still not known as to when it will be approved and enforced.

This is the longest constitution ever written in Nepal during the last six decades, which is meant for the shortest time. It is no exaggeration to say that the Constitution of 1990 had laid overemphasis on the independence of the judiciary, whereas the newly-signed interim constitution has emphasised human rights agenda exclusively. No doubt, the independence of the judiciary is a must for the right functioning of any democratic government, owing to the gross violations of human rights during the decade-old insurgency by the Maoists and the royal army, and the excessive and arbitrary use of force by the army during the 19-day April movement has necessitated a check on violence. Moreover, there have been a number of complaints against the Maoists about the violations in the post-ceasefire period. It is felt that it will take considerable time to disarm those people, especially the boys who have guns in their tiny hands for curbing the crimes in the far-flung areas of the countryside. Naturally, it would be very challenging for the National Human Rights Commission to play an effective role. The outcome of the people’s movement has now become explicit with the signing of the interim constitution that has declared Nepal a republic by implication that the role of the head of state will be discharged by the head of government. It is really no wonder in the context of Nepal where a head of state can play the role of the head of government violating the provisions of the Constitution; it is in tune with the spirit of the movement that was organised against the head of state and government simultaneously.

There are certain inconsistencies in the interim constitution that could have been avoided easily. Firstly, there exists duplication of recommending bodies for the appointments to the constitutional bodies. When the Constitutional Council (CC) recommends the names, the role of the House committee in hearing the cases of recommendations becomes convincingly redundant. As has been observed recently in the case of the appointments of three election commissioners, the House Committee has simply approved the recommendations of the CC headed by the Prime Minister. It would be impractical to oppose the Prime Minister’s recommendation. Hence, experts see no significant role of the House Committee at all in the appointments to constitutional bodies. Either of the two should have been discarded, if this problem had been considered seriously.

Secondly, the CC constitution appears to be unreasonable. Against the provision for a five-member CC in the 1990 Constitution, it has been made a six-member body where it would be difficult to take decisions when all the six fail to agree on some name necessitating the casting of votes. If it was obligatory to increase the number of the CC members, it could have been increased to seven instead of six, which is an even number. Ironically, similar is the case with the National Security Council.

Thirdly, in view of the interim constitution drafted by the Aryal Drafting Committee fixing rightly the number of the Election Commissioners to three, one wonders as to what was the compulsion to increase the number to five. It could have been increased to nine, which could have served at least one purpose, i.e., the distribution of the posts among all the eight political parties. Relevantly, in India, where in order to clip the wings of T N Sheshan the then Chief Election Commissioner in the early 90s, the Election Commission was made a three-member body where the task of managing the voters whose number is greater than that of the numbers of voters of Russia, entire Europe and the North America taken together.

Fourthly, although multiparty system has been accepted, yet a very difficult condition has been imposed in the constitution with regard to the registration of a political party at the Election Commission. The condition stipulates signatures of at least 10,000 voters for registration. Although I have been advocating the written support of 500/1000 voters for any party for getting registered so that a political party should not remain a matter of a few persons. However, it is felt that the number fixed for it has made the registration of any new party impossible. In other words, restriction has been pushed through the back door to limit the number of political parties in the upcoming Constituent Assembly election to make the central list system viable as a longer list of parties will make the Proportional Representation system a mockery. In short, the interim constitution has accepted the existence of the parties in the parliament and no new party will be allowed to function under this new dispensation.

Mishra is an ex-election commissioner