NEPAL: Missing Voters Mar King’s Democracy Plan

By Marty Logan Reprint | | Print |

Marty Logan

KATHMANDU , Feb 8 2006 (IPS) - Streets and many polling stations were close to deserted, Wednesday, as controversial local body elections were held across Nepal, where police shot and killed one protester and fired into the air to break up other rallies.

Polls for representatives of the South Asian nation’s 58 municipalities were step one in King Gyanendra’s plan to return democracy, but they were boycotted by the main opposition parties and curtailed country-wide after prospective candidates dropped out of contention, fearing retaliation from Maoist rebels who are believed to have killed at least two contenders prior to the vote.

More than 600 candidates withdrew, some saying they had been nominated without their knowledge. Many remaining contestants were elected unopposed and, immediately afterwards, started living in protective custody in army barracks or jails across the nation..

One of Asia’s poorest nations, Nepal has been drained by a decade-long Maoist insurgency that has left 13,000 people dead, most of them innocent villagers.

King Gyanendra seized power from his handpicked prime minister Feb. 1, 2005,arguing that the political parties had failed to end the insurgency, curb corruption and end the political in-fighting that have hamstrung the country since former King Birendra succumbed to 1990’s people’s revolution and granted democracy.

Last year, King Gyanendra announced Wednesday’s local elections and parliamentary polls for 2007 but – after dismissing parliament in 2002 – he continues to govern with a handpicked council of ministers that drafts ordinances to amend major laws and curb opposition. In the past two weeks, nearly 1,000 political party members and other activists have been jailed for opposing the local elections, many of them for three months.

At least two dozen more people were arrested Wednesday after protesting the polls in Chitwan, south of the capital Kathmandu, reported local media. Police swung batons and fired shots in the air to break up the demonstration there, while in west Nepal’s Dang district, police shot and killed an activist of the moderate Marxist-Leninist wing of the Communist Party of Nepal during a demonstration.

Home Minister Kamal Thapa, on Tuesday, authorized security forces to shoot anyone disrupting Wednesday’s vote.

Those jailed are likely to be mistreated, according to recent reports by local and international human rights groups whose members have visited jails and detention centres. Many of those arrested in recent weeks were being held in centres filled beyond their capacity, without appropriate access to food, medicine, clothes, toilets and other basic facilities guaranteed by law, reported the Nepal National Human Rights Commission on Sunday.

The Nepal branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Friday, urged the government to release all detainees held under the Public Security Act for peaceful protests. “The great majority of these persons appear to have been arrested for exercising their right to freedom of peaceful assembly or expressing their political opinion,” said U.N. representative Ian Martin.

One voter, Wednesday, stressed that he was casting his ballot to exercise another right. “This is my right to vote. I know; I’ve worked in many developed countries,” said Ratna Rai, a retired captain in the British Army.

“I’m not political; I don’t like political parties. But I’m very angry. In all developed and civilised countries people have a right to vote, to select their leaders. Here in Nepal people are using live bullets, explosions and violent rallies to get power,” he added, after voting in the Dilibazar neighbourhood of central Kathmandu.

When the polls closed there at 5 pm, about 10 percent of 1,727 eligible voters in the ward – number 32 – had cast ballots at Dilibazar, one of four polling stations. Local media reported that at midday turnout was very low, around 10 percent in many cities and towns.

Votes were being cast for mayors, deputy mayors and ward representatives in 58 municipalities. Out of 4,146 posts, 1,277 candidates had already been elected unopposed and 2,251 posts remained vacant as no candidates filed nominations. A total of 1.4 million voters were eligible to cast their votes, said the Election Commission.

In ward 32, no one ran for ward chairman or representative, leaving elections for Kathmandu’s mayor and deputy mayor only. Those voting “don’t believe this will have an impact on national politics. They have gone because they have certain problems at home or in their neighbourhoods, and they want someone locally who can help them. That’s positive because it is local governance,” said Khem Raj Nepal, executive chairman of the Institute for Local Governance Studies.

“Municipalities are very small in number. In that sense, the election is really negligible. But, in theory, it is significant to have elections in cities because of the volume and variety of services that they provide to the people,” the former secretary of Nepal’s Ministry of Local Development told IPS.

In reality, local governance is not working, he added. “Those who were elected unopposed have resigned. Those who have already taken their oaths of office are not in their offices, they’re in Kathmandu (because they’re scared).”

Maoist rebels, who launched their uprising from the impoverished hills of western Nepal 10 years ago, control most of the countryside outside of sandbagged, barb-wired district headquarters towns. They have targeted government officials and political party workers, forcing many to flee to cities or even cross the border into India. Tens of thousands of ordinary villagers have also been displaced.

Schools, often located on high, strategic ground, are a favourite staging point for both Maoists and the soldiers and police who pursue them. Last week, the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) asked the government to not locate polling centres in schools but the government rejected the request.

It also announced that people could cast ballots without voter identification cards, although that violates government rules, and ordered civil servants to cast ballots. Voting is not normally compulsory in Nepal.

On Tuesday, Minister of State for Information and Communication, Shrish Shumsher Rana, predicted people would defy Maoist threats and the political parties’ boycott to vote.

The turnout, Rana added optimistically, “is beyond surmiseàbut believe me that people will dare cast their votes in the same manner the candidates filed their nominations.”