CAMPS

NC TO RUN TRAINING CAMPS FOR WORKERS
Kathmandu, 18 July: NC decided Wednesday to launch orientation programmes for workers ahead of the 19 November assembly elections.
Central leaders will be sent to all electoral constituencies to conduct
 training camps for workers on party’s election policy and strategy.

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SAFF U-16 CHAMPIONSHIP FROM SATURDAY

Kathmandu, 18 July: A draw for the seven-nation South Asian

Second SAFF U-16 Championship will be conducted  Friday, one day before the tournament begins in the Nepalese capital.

Youth teams host Nepal, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan

and Afghanistan are playing in the second edition of the tournament.

Maldives has not registered..

ANFA has named 23-member squad.

Bal Gopal Maharjan is the chief coach while Sunil Shrestha and

Mrigendra Mishra (goalkeeping) are the other coaches.

SAFF has contributed US$ 50,000 for the tournament while

ANFA will meet the THE deficit..

A draw for the SAFF Championship

will be held 30 July 30 on the last day of the SAFF U-16 Championship.

A 40-member Nepali team is training at a closed camp.

All eight counties of South Asia are participating.

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ELECTION OBSERVERS SHOULD BE GRADUATES SAYS

ELECTION COMMISSION

Kathmandu, 18 July: If a new proposal is anything to go by, election observers should be bachelor’s degree holders if they want to monitor the upcoming Constituent Assembly poll, The Kathmandu Post reports.
An International Observers Accreditation Procedure and Code of Conduct prepared by a committee under EC Commissioner PV Rambhakta Thakur has come up with this proposal. Besides the minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree, sound experiences in election monitoring are a must, it says.
“The observers should be politically neutral and have a bachelor’s degree to monitor the elections,” said Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety. The EC had proposed a similar provision in the 2008 CA elections, but it got the axe later following criticism from election observers.
In case of local elections, the EC committee, however, has proposed that Intermediate degree holders can observe the poll s.
Such a proposal was made public by the EC during an interaction held with national and international election observers in Kathmandu on Wednesday. The observers, at the function, urged the EC to remove this provision, claiming that it will be impractical in Nepal’s context.
“Election observation will not be effective just by holding a bachelor’s degree. It is the experience that matters most,” said Prof Kapil Shrestha, co-chair of National Election Observation Committee. Some domestic election observers argued that SLC graduates should be allowed to monitor the elections.
The proposal that is yet to be endorsed by the EC Board also has it that reports of election observation should be submitted to the election body within 30 days of the poll s. Observers should disassociate themselves from political parties before starting election monitoring and they will not be allowed to monitor the poll s in their respective constituencies, it says. They are not supposed to make any comment on the quality of electoral processes before votes are counted. The election body has also proposed that observers need to cover at least 100 constituencies representing five development regions from Mountain, Hill and Tarai regions if they want to a part of election monitoring.
In the 2008 CA elections, 148 national and 30 international observers had monitored the poll s.
Of them, only 23 and five international institutions had submitted report to the EC.
Following the declaration of the second CA elections for November 19, Asian Network of Free Election, European Union, Carter Centre, and Embassy of Japan have expressed their desire to monitor the upcoming poll s.

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MADESH UNITY STILL A DREAM
Kathmandu, 18 July: :Even as the Madhes-centric parties continue holding unity talks, progress to that effect is nowhere near as the unification process appears to be slowing down, pranab Kharel writes in The Kathmandu Post..
Leaders say talks are going on at a snail’s pace and maintain that any substantial momentum would gather pace only in the run-up to the forthcoming Constituent Assembly elections slated for November 19.
“Even though we are holding informal discussions on party unification, any concrete progress towards that end will be seen only three months prior to the polls,” said a senior Sadbhawana
Party leader requesting anonymity. The party is holding parleys for a possible unity with the Mahanta Thakur-led Tarai Madhes Loktantrik Party (TMLP).
The leader said the parties were weighing up options and are trying to strength their bases at present. “Any talk of an alliance would take place considering the CA polls,” said Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Nepal (MJF-N) leader Arjun Thapa. MJF-N is in no hurry for forging an electoral alliance at the moment, he said.
A peek into unification talks between Madhes-centric parties suggests that they hold unification talks and fail to give due recognition to each other simultaneously.
For instance, talks between TMLP and MJF-N  headed by Upendra Yadav could not materialise as
both the sides were reluctant in having certain leaders in the party. So much so that MJF-N leaders declined to sit for talks with a TMLP team headed by Hridayesh Tripathy, owing to Yadav’s reservation with him. Later on, TMLP formed a separate talks team headed by Sarvendra Nath Shukla.
Madhes watcher Chandrakishore maintains that the Madhes-centric parties are reluctant to unite. “The parties themselves are not very keen on unification. There is an external pressure on them to come together,” he said.
Views of others echo that of some Madhesi leaders. “An electoral alliance will take place during the elections. Therefore, they are in no rush,” said columnist Dipendra Jha.
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