By Our Reporter
Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba has made preparations to hold the local election on May 18. A day after he revealed his plan to hold the election on May 18, he held a meeting with Chief Election Commissioner Dinesh Thapaliya and other commissioners at his official residence in Baluwatar on Tuesday. During the meeting, the EC proposed to hold the poll in a single phase on May 18, and the Prime Minister instructed the EC as well as Home Ministry to make preparations for the polls.
Earlier, after pressure from PM Deuba, the leaders in the ruling parties, especially the Maoist Centre and CPN (Unified Socialist), have made a U-turn by agreeing to hold the local elections by mid-June, giving up their earlier stance to hold them in March next year.
A meeting of the five-party ruling coalition held on Saturday forged a consensus to hold the local level elections by coming mid-June.
Although Prime Minister and Nepali Congress president Sher Bahadur Deuba had also intended to postpone the local polls as the two of big ruling parties (Maoist Centre and CPN (Unified Socialist) were against holding the elections by May or June, he was facing pressure from the rival faction led by Dr. Shekhar Koirala within the NC to hold the elections as envisaged in the Constitution that is by May and June. President Bidya Devi Bhandari in a written note also exerted pressure on Deuba to hold the local polls in time.
Unable to bear the pressure from his party Nepali Congress and the President, and growing criticism from public PM Deuba finally convinced Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Maoist Centre and Madhav Kumar Nepal of the CPN (Unified Socialist) to hold the poll by mid-June with a condition that NC would give continuity to present alliance till the general elections.
The President on Monday also stressed the need for timely elections while receiving the report of the Election Commission.
Moreover, PM Deuba seemed to have realized that he would face more backlash not only from the CPN-UML but also within his party and the public if he did not decide to hold the local election by June. Of course, Deuba had become PM to safeguard the constitution from the Oli-led government, and not to hold the local polls by June would be also a violation of the constitution. But Dahal and Nepal needed political security because they could not win any elections without having backing from the NC.
The ruling party leaders sat twice on Saturday, and the second meeting decided to hold the local polls by mid-June.
However, the government has not yet decided the election dates as of Wednesday.
Earlier, the ruling parties had decided to amend the Election Law which they said contradicted the Constitution. But constitutional experts denied such contradiction and said it was only a ploy to defer the elections for the benefit of Nepal and Dahal.
Ruling parties sweep National Assembly seats
Ruling parties, as expected, swept the National Assembly election held in all seven provinces across the country on January 26.
Out of the total of 19 seats, 18 went to the parties of the ruling alliance while CPN-UM won one seat.
Among the ruling parties, Nepali Congress won six seats and the CPN (Maoist Centre) and CPN (Unified Socialist) secured five seats each while Janata Samajwadi Party-Nepal and Rashtriya Janamorcha won one seat each.
However, in Province-1, the ruling coalition lost a seat to CPN-UML’s candidate Sonam Gyalzen Sherpa while NC candidate Gopal Kumar Basnet and UML candidate Guru Baral received equal 4,488 votes. However, Nepali Congress candidate Basnet was announced victorious through a lottery system.
The NA election had shown that if the ruling parties keep their alliance intact in the local, provincial and federal elections, the UML may face a humiliating defeat.
The UML will be finding it more difficult in the provincial and federal polls if the ruling five parties fielded common candidates in the elections. However, the issue of MCC is likely to bring an end to the present coalition as the Maoist Centre and CPN (Unified Socialist) are strongly opposing the idea of endorsing the MCC from the parliament.
Martyrs Day observed without enthusiasm
This year, no formal event was organised to mark Martyrs’ Day on Sunday. Only rituals like issuing messages by the President and the Prime Minister, and garlanding the statues of the martyrs by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba on the last day of the Martyrs Week were held.
Both the President and the PM in their message said, as usual, that the present political achievements were possible because of the sacrifices made by the martyrs.
However, the Kathmandu Metropolitan City observed the weeklong event by organising small events like garlanding the statues of the big four martyrs— Sukraraj Shastri, Dasarath Chand, Dharma Bhakta and Gangalal—on the spots and days they got martyrdom 81 years ago.
The public showed no enthusiasm to mark the day because they have been witnesses that the political parties and the government devalued the true martyrs’ contributions and sacrifices. Instead, the political parties have their own martyrs. They even included the persons killed in road accidents and in police actions launched to control violent mobs in the list of the martyrs.
The situation is such that many Nepali people have to see the state and political parties honouring a murderer who had slain their fathers and brothers, raped their sisters as martyrs. It is because of the competition among the political parties to included their dead or killed supporters in the list of martyrs
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