NC, UML ASKS PRESIDNT NOT TO ENCOURAGE ORDIANCE RAJ Kathmandu, 11 June: NC and UML Monday went to Shital Niwas to draw the attention of President Dr. Ram Baran Yadav not to issue ordinances and cete an ordinance raj. The two major opposition parties took the decision at a meeting Monday a thersidence of Prakash Man Singh. Teams of two parties were led by NC President Suhsil Koirala and UML Chairman Jhalanath Khanal respectively. The opposition move came after Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai and the president discussed the threeordinances [see related story earlier]. Nnnn PM BRIEFS DIPLOMATIC COMMUNITY UPDATE Kathmandu, June 11 :Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai matched the opposition and briefed the diplomatic community on events that led to the announcement of constituent assembly (CA) elections and dissolution of the CA. The opposition briefed the diplomatic at a resort in Gokarna, At a breakfast meet at Baluwatar, the premier Monday assured the community the government would adopt constitutional and democratic means. Bhattarai assured declared elections would be held on time and added he would work together with parties adopting maximum flexibility. nnnn. GIRIJA PRASAD KOIRALA WENT BEYONd RESPONSIBILITY TO TALK WITH MADESHIS, JANAJATIS Kathmandu, 11 June: Girija Prasad Koirala went beyond his responsibilities to empower constituent assembly to map out a restructuring plan for state and come to agreements with Madeshis and Janajatis, former Chief Justice and chairman of a Comstitution Commission of the 1990 constitution said. “I told him [Girija Prasad Koirala] it’s not the work of the constituent assembly (CA) how to restructure the state. ‘You are going beyond parameters and taking decisions. You have reached decisions with Madeshs and Janajatatis beyond your responsibilities. Ethnic and regional problems will crop up tomorrow. I thld Girijababu them people willblameyou for this, “Yes. The present chaos is the result of the hurried removal of an established institution. “If you look at the reality deeply, compared to other countries, I don’t feel in our country kings did such grave injustice to people. Kings wanted to maintain ethnic, linguistic and cultural unity,’ Bishwanath Upadhaya who was chairman of 1990 constitution drafting committee told BBC Nepali Service as reported by Janabhawana. Nnnn INTERVIEW PROBLEMS IN CONDUCTING ANNOUNCED ELECTIONS After the sudden death of the constitution-making process on May 27, there is another hot date in Nepali politics—November 22—that is raising political temperatures. Not all parties are happy with the date set by the PM Baburam Bhattarai to hold another CA election and get a fresh people’s mandate. The Nepali Congress and CPN-UML want a new government before participating in the polls. And the lawyers warn of constitutional amendments necessary to make it work. In this context, The Kathmandu Post’s Bhadra Sharma and Gyanu Adhikari met Acting Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety to get his views on the challenges ahead. Uprety, a pioneer of digital voter registration system in Nepal, has also been credited with taking steps to keep party expenditures transparent in recent times . Excerpts: What are the challenges to conducting credible elections? An election is not perfect 100 percent in any country of the world, as you might have seen and heard. But our challenges are distributed into two parts: one is created by the political environment and security challenge. These are man-made challenges. The second is a geographical hurdle because of the landscape. Because of the difficult terrain, elections are not easy to conduct. Lack of roads is also problematic as sometimes it takes a week just to get to a place and set up a polling station. The government has set a November 22, 2012 date for the next election. Will that be possible? The Election Commission always has to be ready to hold election in a short span of time. But in the case of Nepal, even if you wish to hold an election, you can’t in the monsoon. You can’t hold it during winter in 16 districts either. There are only two possibilities: one window is September, October, and if you stretch it, possibly the first week of November. The other window is April-May. Getting back to your question, the government has already set a date and the EC likes to think that we are able to hold an election whenever necessary. Even before these elections were announced, we were saying that we need local level elections as we haven’t had them in 14 years. So, to hold an election as the government has set, isn’t the problem. Procedurally, what are the challenges EC is facing? The process needs a format and a format requires the constitution. If the constitution and law are managed in time, then it’s possible to hold election (on November 22). The law is a product of the constitution. According to the law we make a regulation. According to the regulation, we make a set of directives. According to the directives, we give training. And according to the training, we send out the bureaucrats. This is the process we undertake to get things in order. What are the legal hurdles the EC is facing? First, the Interim Consitution says that the CA elections would be held by 2008—but now it’s 2012. Then, it says that those who reached the age of 18 in 2007 are eligible to vote, but then what about those who reached 18 in the five years that followed? Next, in the last election it was done through both Proportional representation and first past the post system, and even if we go for the same system again, the rule is that after the results of the census are out, the constituencies have to be delineated accordingly. Right now there are 240 constituencies but they may be more or less according to the new census data. Getting this sorted is also sensitive and political. If the most recent data isn’t going to be available, then they need to tell us to go by the last census data. The other issue, which has reached the Supreme Court, is over if another election to CA is possible since the constitution was not promulgated by the last one. There are lots of such ambiguities. Fundamentally, we need to know which election and how to do it. Otherwise we can’t prepare and it will be difficult. Unless all the parties agree to go for elections, it’s difficult to know what kind of democracy we’re moving towards. But the EC can hold them, if we are given what we need. Are there any problems with the voter list? The fundamental aspect of an election is based around the voter’s right to vote. The voter list has to be right so that people can freely vote. We have been working hard towards this end. We don’t want to use the voters list used in past elections because some voters were registered in more than one place. Some of the deceased are still on that list. Likewise, there are names of some of those who are too young to vote. We want to get rid of these faults in the next election. The way to do this is by trying to meet every voter instead of having family members or friends write out their names and details. Previous practice made it a bit difficult to exercise the one-man one-vote right. That’s why we have been in the process of creating a voter list inclusive of photos and biometric data for the past two years. Thus far, we have accumulated about 10,500,000 names with photos and fingerprints. If there is an election in November 22, this is the voter list which would be used? Yes. We don’t know exactly how many more voters are out there due to lack of research. We have a population census, but its data is still being processed. We estimate that there are around 10,450,000 voters in the country. Accordingly, we have about 4,000,000 more voters to register. Among these 4,000,000, it is estimated that around 3,000,000 are working abroad. They need to be included but right now, we don’t have measures to include them in the list. So I think that leaves us with around 1,000,000 left to add to voter list in the coming months. We will revisit the places where many people haven’t registered and try to include them. For those abroad, we can try and accommodate them when they visit Nepal. But is it fair to exclude Nepalis who are working ab road? According to the principle of electoral justice, every citizen has the right to vote. We wish that every Nepali over the age of 18 vote in an election. But it’s not about wishing; it is also a matter of ability. Looking at the time and financial constraints we face, it looks difficult to get their votes. The Election Commission has started researching the ways in which we can accommodate the diaspora into the national election. But if we just look at the Nepalis in the US, there are 50 states—where do we put the ballot boxes? In the Middle East, many Nepali workers are illiterate—how do we deal with that hurdle? And we cannot discriminate against those who live in India with those who live in England either. Nepalis live in 112 countries—even with the wish to accommodate all Nepalis, it’s not easy. Is it not a political issue? Do parties agree that we should allow voting from abroad? If you ask me, it’s mostly just financial and administrative. What are the criteria for one to be included in the voter list? There are many types of identification, but we have been asking for citizenship cards as the fundamental form of ID. This has created some challenges. There are those who are 18, or 90- years-old and don’t have a citizenship card. Those who don’t wish to take a citizenship card, those who haven’t been granted them, or those who cannot travel to get it made—all three conditions are present in our society. On that front, in terms of getting citizenship ID into the hands of these people, the government and the concerned offices need to work towards this end. For us, we were unable to put these people on the list without a citizenship card because all other documents could be controversial. How will the upcoming CA election be different from the previous one? Because of the debate over the reasons why the constitution wasn’t drafted and the CA dissolved, the election will likely be sharply contested. Between the stakeholders, a sense of determination to win at all costs is likely to arise. This kind of competition will make the election sensitive and security will be an issue. Do you foresee a conducive environment for November 22? There are two types of violence: open violence and internal fears. If the second kind of violence pervades, then it’s the most dangerous. We can handle outright open violence and can provide security, but the psychologically-injected violence is almost impossible to fight. If people fear voting one way or another, because of threats they have received, it’s problematic for democracy. We have seen this is past elections and if this comes across in the next election, it will affect democratic culture in Nepal. nnnn