VERDICT IN NEPAL...The rout of the Maoists

SNS, 24 November 2013: NEARLY 70 per cent of Nepal’s electorate exercised its franchise to choose 601 members to the the Constituent Assembly-cum-Parliament in what was described as the fairest elections ever conducted in the country.

Foreign observers have admitted as much. Women comprised more than 50 per cent of voters. The initial first-past-the-post counting results have been surprising, though not unexpected. Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda lost in Kathmandu Constituency No. 10 and his daughter from Kathmandu constituency No. 1.

And most of the party members have been voted out of their constituencies.

The Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) and the Nepali Congress have once again catapulted themselves to national reckoning.

Another key player, the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum’s position is more or less the same as in 2008.Prachanda’s UCPN(M) is a distant third.

Not surprisingly, distraught Prachanda has demanded the ongoing vote counting process be stopped alleging “rigged counting methods” and a “large-scale conspiracy” among others. He has also threatened that his party will not join the Constitution-drafting process and hopes to team up again with the splinter group headed by hardliner Mohan Baidya, whose party gave a call for a 10-day transport strike to stall polling, and has no political legitimacy. 

Prachanda alone knows why his party bit the dust and also that in the second stage of counting it has a chance, at worst, of coming second either behind the CPN (UML) or the Nepali Congress. Five years ago, the people of Nepal saw in Prachanda a saviour who could free the country of corruption and nepotism that had sent the economy spiralling downward during the rebellion days. It is a pity that five years later it finds itself on shaky ground. 

An outsider Kamal Thapa-led Rashtriya Prajatantra Party could have been a deciding factor in cabinet formation but its candidates, who fought on the agenda of Hinduism and constitutional monarchy, did not fare well in the first stage. 

The Nepali Congress and the CPN(UML ) need not be too euphoric about their success. It is just that the voters went for the lesser evil. During the days of multi-party democracy both had formed governments two or three times, though not with resounding success. 

It remains to be seen how they will gain political and legitimate consensus  on the country’s bone of contention ~ ethnic or economy-based federalism ~ that will ultimately determine when or even if Nepal’s new Constitution will actually be written. Or be regularly amended.