I always perk up when Nepal gets covered in American media, and I have been waiting for the New York Times to publish something. I follow the politics there closely. The New York Times correspondent has had a torrent of micro-events to piece together. How did he do?
Violence Flares as Nepal Heads to Landmark Elections
That was the title. www.nytimes.com/…
KATHMANDU, Nepal — Days before Nepal’s most important elections in years, Maoist militants have opened fire on politicians, blown up vehicles, planted land mines and targeted civilians in dozens of attacks, injuring at least 17 people, some seriously.
“We want this election to be dismissed,” said Om Prakash Pun, a leader of a splinter political party leading the attacks.
Um, yes it’s true. A spate of pipe bombs have been set, including one in the yard of recent (not in office at present) Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli. The article gives a recap of recent history in Nepal, and ends with interviews of several victims of the bombs.
Pipe Bombs and jaded eyes of international community
On the scale of things, the pipe bombs were set to deliver a message and not to maximize the carnage in the way chosen by international terrorist groups that make the usual USA headlines. The US Embassy issued a statement.np.usembassy.gov/…
KATHMANDU – Following the largely peaceful conduct of Nepal’s three phases of local elections, the United States is alarmed at recent attacks on political candidates and condemns any attempt to impede the electoral process through the use of violence…....
I don’t want to seem like I am dismissing the seriousness of the pipe bombs, and least of all do I want to seem like I am saying they need to escalate. But — the Nepal Army has been doing a good job to mitigate this threat. The Nepal government mobilized three hundred thousand people in uniform to patrol during the election process.
Election Timetable
This election is following a plan set out when the ‘new' constitution was promulgated in 2015. The idea is to federalize the country, and move power away from Kathmandu to more local jurisdictions. There have been local and provincial elections in the past year, and now the final elections for the national parliament. This has allowed the country opportunities to practice holding an election in the first place. We take this for granted in USA, but in Nepal they had not had this scale of elections in twenty years. It is a country of thirty million people (if it were a US State, it would be second in population only to California; bigger than, say, Texas or the entire New England region).
Here is a Q & A with an American Law Professor from Howard University on the subject of federalism in Nepal: www.myrepublica.com/…
Constitutional expert and adjunct professor at Howard University School of Law Waris Husain has closely studied Nepal’s constitutional process and interacted extensively with Nepali lawmakers, civil society leaders, judges, students of law and common people. His goal is to find out the challenges to the implementation of the new Nepali constitution. Thira L Bhusal caught up with Husain during his most recent Nepal visit.
The current event was only half the election — generally the mountainous regions have now voted, and on Dec 7th the Terai (the flat part bordering India) will go to the polls.
The Nepali Times commentary nepalitimes.com/…
The Nepali Times is an English-language weekly in Nepal and they published an analysis by George Varughese, of the Asia Foundation.
Between May and September 2017, Nepalis elected over 35,000 representatives to run 753 local governments. A majority of those elected do not have previous experience in government. Much has been made of their lack of preparation, knowledge, and capacity. The commentary on local government incapability has been witheringly dismissive, contemptuous even. There is a collective failure to respect the people’s choice to vote in overwhelming numbers in the hope for change in the status quo of impunity in Nepali governance.
The above piece is well worth the read.
The Horse Race
The run-up to this election was a period of turmoil as the existing political parties came to grips with the new rules. Over the past ten years, it has seemed the same cabal of Kathmandu-based politicos have taken turns leading — there are about a dozen living “former Prime Ministers.” Also, Nepal has had more than fifty political parties. There has been a process of consolidation of these parties into a smaller number of coalition parties. The two biggest ones are Nepali Congress and the Marxist-UML party. A new party, Bibeksheel, has benefitted from charismatic leaders and has campaigned on the idea of reform. On the one hand, Bibkesheel is dismissed because they do not have cadre on the ground. On the other hand, there is tremendous uncertainty as to what the electorate will do, since there is no track record of previous elections to go by.
India v China
Likewise, the regional trend in Nepal is a factor. There is a historical breach between the Kathmandu government and the Terai region where half the population resides. In 2015 India (may or may not have, wink wink) helped the Nepalis near the border conduct a petrol blockade ( which I wrote about extensively in DailyKOS at the time). The Nepali Congress is accused of being the puppets of India; The UML/Marxist alliance is said to desire better ties to China because of the possibility of infrastructure investment.
Small Factoids of Nepali elections
UML stands for United Marxist-Leninist, and the name is the same in Nepali language, though they spell it phonetically from English. It reads “Yew Em Ell” when read.
Nationwide, the majority of adults are illiterate, (60% or more depending on the region). This presents a challenge to mark ballots. Individual candidates do not appear on each ballot; instead the symbol for the party is used. UML is the sun; Nepali Congress is a tree; Marxists are the hammer-and-sickle, Bibeksheel is the scales of justice.
One specific issue I am personally following is the willingness of the government to expand the number of medical colleges. wp.me/… Nepal now has twenty; some politicians are accused of selling the licenses to open new ones, to the highest bidder, a move opposed by the Nepal Medical Association.
In Nepali language is this instructional video:
Yes, folks, that’s a swastika stamp in the video. The symbol is reviled due to association with Nazis, but in South Asia where it originated it is still in use and has no such connotation.
Addendum: My favorite Nepali journalist is Subina Shrestha of Al Jazeera. Here is her report, from Manang district:
www.aljazeera.com/...