Mistimed melody
UNICEF’s concern over the Election Commission’s decision to locate 75 per cent of the polling booths for Wednesday’s municipal elections in school premises is guided by its fears that this may unwittingly drag the schools and students further into the crossfire. Already, the 10-year-old conflict has had damaging effects on the school system and the students across the country. Given this fact and UNICEF’s slogan that the schools be turned into a ‘zone of peace’, it is not difficult to understand its concern. As not only the Maoists but also the mainstream political parties are going all-out to foil the polls on the grounds that they are a farce, setting up polling centres in schools may invite the rebels’ wrath, apart from certainly disrupting the classes for several days.
It may not be illegal to use schools for polling purposes. In the past, too, the government set up many polling booths in schools. On those occasions, no organisation issued statements of concern, because those were normal times and such decisions would not have put children’s interests at risk. The current objection is therefore based on the prediction of a breakout of violence, as well as on the possibility of Maoist retaliation afterward. Violence in the school premises will create a scare; it is not merely a question of fears about possible damage to infrastructure. Indeed, because of such a scare many children have already stopped coming to school in a number of places.
A government which supports the slogan of schools as a zone of peace when the Maoists use the school premises for their political or military purposes cannot well defend the use of schools for its political or military purposes, either. The issue at hand is how wise or sensitive to the children’s interests the government has been. But, unfortunately, instead of admitting its mistake, the government has criticised the UN agency for drawing its attention to the inherent dangers, when Radha Krishna Mainali, the education and sports minister, claimed that the UN had no authority to advise the government. UNICEF indeed has this authority; it is for the government to take or not to take its advice. The government has adopted double standards. It has always played up the positions of world bodies or foreign governments on Nepal’s domestic issues whenever they suit its interests whereas it cries foul when their opinion puts it in an inconvenient situation. Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey’s criticism on Saturday of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Nepal reflects this mindset.