After all the elections held successfully under the federal structure according to the new statute, left alliance comprising the UML and CPN-MC won the comfortable majority leaving behind the Nepali Congress (NC).

Still, the official result under the Proportional Representation (PR) system is yet to be announced by the Election Commission (EC) based on the ‘Sainte-League’ system. However, the estimated number of seats under this system shows that the UML and NC are neck to neck in PR seats.

It looks interesting while closely observing the polling results that the voters, who were tired of seeing frequent changes of government in the past, wanted to see the left alliance run the country for the next five years while NC sitting in the opposition. Now, the time has come for the left alliance to form a new government with able, sincere, and honest ministers with appropriate portfolios.

The new government needs to quickly act to deliver prompt services to the people as promised during the election campaign. People are cautiously eager to see the new government will gradually lead the nation towards peace and prosperity. There are definitely many challenges ahead for the new government. However, there are a lot of opportunities also for them to prove their capabilities, sincerity, accountability and commitment towards the nation and its people. For this, both the UML and CPN-MC senior leaders should be sincere towards each other to fulfill their pre-election agreement.

If they fail to implement their agreements and start playing their political egoism as in the past, then the next elections will  be very costly for them. Judging the number of seats won by the left alliance, the voters seem to have endorsed the idea of unification of the UML and CPN-MC to form a single communist party as announced by them before the provincial and federal elections.

As reported, K.P. Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal will lead the government on a rotation basis “Oli, Dahal likely to lead government turn by turn“ (THT, December 19, Page 1). Whoever runs the next government, people will be closely watching his political performance based on the gradual implementation of their political manifestos.

Rai Biren Bangdel, Maharajgunj

Tourism

This is in reference to the article “Adventure tourism: Nepal’s potentials”. (THT, December 19, Page 8). There is no doubt that Nepal has a great potential to develop. For example, ski-mountaineering is plausible owing to the perfect natural gifts the country has.

The Westerners have an enormous zeal for this sort of sports, which is why Nepal is increasingly becoming one of their popular tourist destinations. I think this may very well be a great source of income if we treat this as a smokeless industry and look for what needs to be improved to prop this industry up in the days to come.

Shiva Neupane, Melbourne