A cursory look at the election history of Nepal reveals that the parties have always betrayed the people's trust except for the 1959 election
The year 1947 marked an epoch in the history of elections in Nepal. That year, a Constitutional Reform Committee was constituted by the 8th Rana Prime Minister, Padma Shumsher, followed by the Nepal Government Law 1948 that envisaged a bicameral legislature through an election that would elect 42 members while another 42 members would be nominated by the prime minister to the Lower House and the Rastriya Sabha. Since then, jargons like election and votes have started occupying the minds of the Nepalis. However, the concept of voting in an election materialised only after the first general election in 1959. Today, elections, including the one scheduled for November 20, are topics for discussion in every village and town.
Though seventh in the series since the political change of 1991, the general election next week is the first of its kind – quite unique for the Westminster model of parliamentary practice since some major political parties of entirely different ideologies are contesting the election as coalition partners. A symbol of the party with its manifesto reflecting the political ideology, principles, policies and programmes to be implemented by the party's government if mandated by the voters are the common phenomena in a party-based election campaign.
But in this election, one party belonging to a coalition is asking voters to cast their votes for another party's symbol, which is against the core spirit of parliamentary elections.
Periodic general elections in Nepal to form a government responsible to the parliament elected by the people began in 1959, following the promulgation of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal by late King Mahendra in consultation with the then major political parties in, like the Nepali Congress, Gorkha Parishad and the Communist Party of Nepal.
The 1959 general election in Nepal was a historic political event, greatly cherished following the end of hereditary Rana rule in February 1951. The expiry of the Rana rule could not establish a democratic government through a general election by adopting an acceptable constitution due to the intra and inter party feud for eight years.
The Rana regime had remained in existence for 104 years as the de facto ruler by retaining the Shah monarchy only as a de juro head of the state. That both head of the government and state should exist on hereditary basis was obviously considered undemocratic polity for any country.
The electorates of Nepal in the 1959 election had voted for the Nepali Congress, which bagged 74 of the 109 seats in the parliament, followed by the Gorkha Parisad with 19 seats and the Communist Party of Nepal with 4 seats.
The victory of the Nepali Congress with a two-thirds majority in that election stood on two grounds, namely, the voters' expression of appreciation of the NC's role in the 1951 revolution against the Rana rule and secondly, little noticed, was that the election was held phase-wise, where votes were counted right after the election that included the NC's strongholds.
The results that came in favour of the NC had a demonstration effects on the subsequent elections in the other constituencies.
To the dismay of many, that system, however, came to an end following the takeover of state power by the king, who dissolved nearly all the provisions of the constitution through an address to the nation. The dissolution of parliamentary form of polity was substituted by a non-party political system called the Panchayat with a unicameral legislative assembly called the Rastriya Panchayat in 1962. It consisted of 125 members elected through an indirect method from the local, district, zonal to the national level.
However, from 1981 onwards, elections from the local (village/town to the highest apex Rastriya Panchayat) to the central level started taking place based on universal adult franchise, under which two general elections were held in 1981 and in 1986 before the Panchayat polity was disbanded following a popular people's movement. A multi-party political system based on the same Westminster model of democracy was reintroduced in 1991.
The general election of 1991 was the first one to be held under the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1991 promulgated by King Birendra on the recommendation of the then cabinet headed by NC leader Krishna Prasad Bhattarai as the interim premier. The 1991 election voted the NC to power with 114 seats in the 205-member House of Representatives.
Most of the senior political leaders who spearheaded the movement for restoration of multi-party system kept harping that the 1991 constitution was a model for the world and the most democratic constitution of any land. But it could not continue for more than a decade-and-ahalf.
Consequently two elections were held for a Constituent Assembly, shamelessly putting a huge financial burden on the state of this poor country.
However, another constitution was adopted by the socalled Constituent Assembly in 2015 followed by a subsequent general election, which brought the communist parties – the ULM together with the Maoists – to power, but it could not survive a full term due to conflict of interests among the parties in the government. The November 20 election is the result of their failure to absorb the trust of people put on them.
A cursory look at the election history of Nepal vividly reveals that the political parties have always betrayed the people's trust except for the 1959 election, when the king dissolved the parliament after just 18 months of its existence.
The upcoming election is taking place at a time when the country is witnessing massive corruption from the local to the central level irrespective of which party is in power, high degree of impunity, and lack of people's confidence in all the three state organs. The ball is now in the court of roughly 18 million voters, whose ability to choose the right candidates to govern them will be closely watched by all.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 18, 2022 of The Himalayan Times.
