--By Achyut Wagle

 

Although the countdown to November 19, the scheduled date for the second Constituent Assembly (CA) elections, reduces from months to days, uncertainty on the polls continue to hover. A drama of double acts, on-stage and off-stage, orchestrated simultaneously by forces striving to hold the polls and forces trying to foil it, respectively, takes upon the country.

 

The on-stage drama looks normal - as though nothing is amiss and things are all set to sail smoothly until the polls and even beyond. The four-party pro-poll alliance of the UCPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML and Madhesi Front now swells to a six-party one after the Madhesi Janaadhikar Forum of Upendra Yadav and the Federal Socialist Party led by Ashok Rai joined the group upon agreeing to participate in the polls. The leaders and working committees of these parties are flexing their muscles to select candidates for the first-past-the-post system for two hundred and forty constituencies. The elites in all these parties are busy drafting their respective manifestoes. Aspirants of party tickets for candidacy, from all parties alike, have gathered in Kathmandu to cajole their leaders. The party offices are crowded, traffic jams in the capital have increased not only due to an increased number of vehicles and people but also due to increased violation of traffic rules by those who are not used to following them in districts outside of Kathmandu.

 

There are fringe parties like the Rastriya Prajatantra Party (RPP) and RPP-Nepal that are not in the alliance but have opted to join the election bandwagon. The pro-royalist RPP-Nepal hopes to perform better if polls were to take place in view of the people’s growing disenchantment towards the major political parties. The ambitious ones who failed to woo the party they belong to pick them as candidates are defecting and joining other parties. Professionals and celebrities are taking membership of parties of their choice, hoping to be new leaders. 

 

The Election Commission says it has completed all preparations. The election offices in all two hundred and forty constituencies have been opened, logistics and personnel supplied and ballot papers are ready to be printed. Security agencies are recruiting additional forces. Everything on this side of the screen appears destined to have a happy ending.

 

But the off-stage rehearsal of the other act determined to foil this election at any cost does not signal anything as good. An alliance of supposedly thirty-three parties, led by CPN-Maoist, Mohan Baidya group, has made all possible preparations to create impediments at every possible stage of this election and the scale of their preparation in no way looks dismal. 

 

They have printed thousands of red T-shirts with the slogan ‘Lets boycott the so- called CA polls’ printed across. The party has reorganized its youth wing and informal sources claim that they have been instructed to service their concealed old guns that were put to rest after the peace deal seven years ago. If anybody has cared to notice the walls across the country, they have been made colourful with boycott slogans. The leaders of the Baidya group have publicly declared that they will resort to kidnapping candidates from the day of nomination, which was rescheduled from September 25th to October 2nd. The processions organized by this group already look scary. Cadres carry flags and placards on iron rods, with obvious objectives. The back rows are armed with clubs, bamboo sticks, hammers and some even with catapults.

 

The No-option Trap

Violence seems imminent, and it might easily exacerbate to make it impossible to hold the polls for two main reasons. First, the Baidya group with its alliance partners has a nation-wide presence. Second, they are left in a no option trap as the logistics to bring the opposing alliance onboard the election process appears impossible, at least so to manage it for November 19th. 

 

The pro-poll alliance is, though, pretending to be engaged in dialogue with Baidya and his group. In essence, the very rationale of such a dialogue no longer holds. It is not only that the poll-opposing parties have not registered in the Election Commission - their rank and files have not enrolled in the voter list either. Thus they cannot file for candidacy even if dialogues bore any positive result. While addressing the demand of Rai’s party, the four-party alliance agreed to increase the total number of CA seats from 586 to 601, leaving no further option of placating Baidya and group through addition of CA seats.

 

 

For all practical reasons, Baidya and his alliance are left to a no-option trap than opposing the proposed elections. It must be acknowledged that this group had shown unprecedented flexibility in the all-party meeting called by President Dr Ram Baran Yadav mid-September. The only major condition it had put forth to participate in the polls was that the Chairman of the Interim Election Government Khil Raj Regmi resign from the post of chief justice of the Supreme Court of Nepal. This demand was indeed in compliance to the principle of the separation of power among the organs of the state under any acceptable form of democratic governance. It was surprising that the so-called democratic parties also failed to agree on this very reasonable demand by the opposition. It appeared as if the six-party alliance was determined not to bring Baidya into the election fold. Often reported clandestine machinations to throw Baidya at the bay, do appear to be holding some water.

 

Peculiar Movements

There are unnatural political movements that contribute to gradually worsen the situation. It is no longer a secret that Baidya’s participation in the polls would not affect anyone substantially but the UCPN (Maoist). Therefore, sidelining of Baidya is seen as the outcome of the successful hoodwinking of UCPN (Maoist) Chairman Puspa Kamal Dahal. Regmi’s stiffening of position on the resignation issue and wee hour meetings between the duo, even when Dahal was not the convener of the six-party alliance, are viewed as part of such machinations.

 

Forces at Play

There is a very strong intelligentsia in Kathmandu which believes that the dialogue with Baidya, which at one point of time appeared heading to a resolution, got suddenly aborted after Indian foreign secretary Sujatha Singh visited Nepal in the second week of September. Her insistence on holding the polls in the November ‘at any cost’ is in effect tantamount to leaving the poll-opposing groups out of the fray.

 

Following Singh’s visit, Chinese information minister Cai Moinzhu came to Nepal in the third week of the same month, who unlike Singh reportedly chose to meet Baidya, which interestingly was not covered by the media.

 

The public speeches of ambassadors like that of Germany and the United States have also created some political ripples as they ‘campaigned’ for the scheduled elections. Media reports claiming that international election observers have started to land in Nepal suggests that the outside world is more interested in elections here than the Nepali people themselves.

 

Degrading to a soft-state

President Yadav recently gave assent to an ordinance that enables the government to mobilize the Nepal Army for the scheduled polls. Yadav, in fact, is bowing down to sign everything that the six-party mechanism wants him to do, invoking the single constitutional provision of ‘removing the difficulties’. He, for example, first agreed to a 491-member CA, then to 586 and finally, again to 601. 

 

He is doing all these things without making sure that the elections would actually take place and his signing of these documents do facilitate the process of political reconciliation and peace building.

 

These developments have created a situation that any constitutional, institutional and legal changes can be effected in Nepal at any point of time, at will. There is no stability factor and there is no defined position of the State. This is a very dangerous soft state syndrome. The editor of a prominent news magazine tweeted last week, ‘if anything can come as removing difficulties, why can’t one new constitution too come from the same window, putting all fuss to an end?’

 

New Round of Conflict

The country is all set to enter a fresh round of conflict, for now as a clash between pro and anti-poll forces, if the government chooses to crush the ones determined to oppose these polls. The fact is: the opposition forces are determined to stop this election and they are not a very fringe force that could be quelled with regular security operation.

 

Even if these polls are held by using all possible instruments, the CA elected thus is unlikely to deliver a constitution that is acceptable even to those now opposing the polls. The conflict might even aggravate at this point.  As such, the promulgation of a constitution would be next to impossible. The only way to peace again is to bring all political forces to the electoral process, which for now means, unquestionably, deferral of the election date to a new one acceptable to all - both to create political space for the dissenting parties and make it logistically possible for them to participate in the electoral process. 

 

(The writer is former editor of Aarthik Abhiyan National Daily.)