Kathmandu, April 4, 2008

Prime Minister GP Koirala today told the Supreme Court that the country’s republican agenda will be decided by the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly.

“The third amendment to the Interim Constitution 2007 has introduced a provision that states that the first meeting of the CA will only implement the agenda regarding the republic,” Koirala said.

Submitting a written explanation to the apex court’s show cause notice in connection with a case challenging the third amendment to the Interim Constitution, Koirala claimed the first meeting will implement the republican agenda, saying that the original provision in the Interim Constitution had stated that the first CA meeting will decide on the fate of monarchy.

Koirala defended the third amendment just six days before the CA polls. The PM was responding to the court’s show cause notice on why the country was declared a republican nation, and presidential and federal system of governance was proposed through the third amendment.

“The third amendment was introduced for effective implementation of the republican agenda, which was originally introduced by the Interim Constitution,” the PM’s explanation said.

Final results to emerge 3 weeks after polls: EC

Kathmandu, April 4, 2008

The country will have to wait for at least three weeks after the constituent assembly election to get final results of the crucial vote.

“Though parallel vote counting for the first-past-the-post and the proportional representation system will begin immediately after the election, the final results may not be out at least three weeks after that,” Election Commission spokesman Laxman Bhattarai told this daily.

The reasons cited by the EC for the delayed results include chances of re-polling in different constituencies due to various unwanted developments such as rigging and unavoidable circumstances such as the lack of enough space to count the votes cast under the PR system.

As per the EC’s vote-counting directives, there is a time-consuming process to be followed before the re-polling takes place in case of rigging. The election officer first stalls the counting of votes and informs the Commission about the same.

The Commission then sends a commissioner or a monitoring team to the polling centre to probe the incident. The new schedule for the re-polling is fixed on the basis of the report filed by the commissioner or the monitoring team. “That is why we cannot specifically state how long it will take to conduct re-polling,” said Bhattarai. Moreover, re-polling will have a chain-reaction.