--By Achyut Wagle
The national debate on holding the local body elections -- for the Village Development Committees (VDCs), Municipalities and District Development Committees (DDCs) -- is at its high after one and half decades, but the very prospect of the same actually taking place still whirls in the rough waters. No doubt, one of the most positive outcomes of the Nepali Congress (NC)-CPN UML coalition government is that it moved positively to hold the local body elections. But there is still doubt on the possibility of these elections being held by end of June this year. It has been sixteen years since these elections were held last and the term of the office bearers expired some twelve years ago. In the absence of democratically elected local bodies, the public service delivery, grassroots public works and institution of democracy have faltered to the hilt. The consequences are apparent -- the capital expenditure for years has been far less than the allocated targets, the GDP growth has stagnated at yearly average of 3.5 percent for last eight years despite the fact that country has enjoyed relative political peace during this period, and the emergence of new generation of leadership in any possible political formation has been nipped in the bud.
Even now, the dampener to the call to these crucial polls comes as a single voice of both factions of the Maoist parties that parted ways some three years ago, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal and Mohan Vaidya respectively. From the ideological prism, the opposition to the polls by the Maoists looks all natural. And, it was expected from the Vaidya group given the fact that it remained out of the second Constituent Assembly (CA) elections held in last November. But, by contrast, the move appears rather anachronistic for Dahal and his party (UCPN Maoist) that has vowed to remain in competitive politics of ballots despite all odds. The political plunder the Party is now venturing into may well turn out to be a mammoth blunder not only for Dahal and Co. but for the entire country and the democratic process itself.
It is not difficult to decipher Dahal's calculations to oppose these polls. He is apprehensive of poor outcome for his party if it goes to polls without uniting the Vaidya faction. On top of it, not only Maoists, every party other than UML is fearful of the local polls conducted when Bamdev Gautam is at the helm of Ministry of Home Affairs. However, the opposition to these polls from Vaidya comes as entirely different reason: this group is determined to go against any proposition made by the parties in CA and under the present scheme of political arrangements. It is in fact Vaidya's chosen plank since it separated from the mother party UCPN Maoist.
But to hide real shortcomings, Dahal has adopted a new but unambiguously anti-democratic stance in the form of opposing these polls. His formal premise of this opposition is: the inevitable engagement of the government and political parties in the local elections would divert the focus away from the constitution writing. He has also trained his party rank and file to rant out that the poll competition among the parties would bitter the differences that could be reflected in constitution writing. 'It hardly causes any grave damage if we defer the polls by seven or eight months for these local bodies that have remained vacant for last sixteen years,' Dahal has unequivocally said.
Apparently, Dahal's statement lacks creativity and craftsmanship. Every politician who wanted to procrastinate on the local elections through all these years has used the same platitude, pointing to some larger political urgency or priority to be addressed before these 'trivial' polls. When the term of the local office-bearers expired, the Maoist insurgency had swept the country. The priority was 'saving democracy from terrorism'. When the peace deal was sealed in 2006, agenda of saving the peace process overshadowed the local polls. Then, in 2008, the CA elections were natural priority. The Interim Constitution 2007 didn't even incorporate a provision for local elections, which is a real shame on our constitutionalism and so-called experts who drafted it. When the first CA came into existence, influencing experts had a take, 'since entire nation were to be federalised, the local elections would only be a nuisance in the larger process of restructuring the state.' When the extended tenure of the first CA expired without writing the constitution, sense of national loss was so overwhelming; no leader had time to ponder over these 'unimportant' local elections. Then came the second CA elections and existence. The change in political equations gave birth to NC-UML coalition in government that fortunately has begun at least the talk of these polls. But, unfortunately, efforts are already on to stall them.
The crucial questions here are: Were all those cited reasons both necessary and sufficient conditions to procrastinate the local elections at different political turning points? Were these 'local' elections so unimportant at the face of other 'national' agenda? And, do they still deserve to be pushed further away in this or that pretext? Answer to all these questions is one big NO, but the background that leads to this simple NO is excruciatingly painful and treacherous.
The first and perhaps the most powerful of all explanations is that the central leadership of any party strongly hated these elections. After 1992 local elections, the NC and UML saw that many articulate, learned young cadres elected as local leaders attracted national and international attention. They were the first to woo the public confidence as they had resources, public position and closest contact to the grassroots population. This created a very real threat of displacement to the national leadership if such a 'mass manufacturing' of young breed of leaders were continued. A simple example to vindicate it could be enough to compute the proportion of members in current or past CAs that were elected in those local bodies during 1990s. The best way to allay this threat of 'big' leaders was to stop this practice altogether wherever and whenever possible. The Maoist who came to mainstream through Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) 2006, were no different from NC or UML in this regard.
If that were not the case, there was not any convincing reason to not hold the local polls at least after the CPA. Had local bodies come into existence then, it could have been a great vehicle to bring the local political leadership of different parties at the same political platform. It could also have been the most effective mechanism to deliver the putative 'peace dividend' to the people in general. These polls could have been conducted at the sidelines of both CA elections without much additional logistical and security costs. But, to repeat, leadership of no major party was honestly interested to hold these elections. Even the CA members were (still are) against it. Their naive complaint used to be 'DDC chairman, or a mayor, with all facilities and resources at his disposal is more powerful than a member of CA or legislature.' These are real impediments
to these polls than any fabricated political logic.
Otherwise, these local elections on their own merit are very important from every possible paradigm of democracy, development, decentralization and true devolution of power. One can also convincingly argue that inputs to the constitution writing, state restructuring and political reconciliation would have come in more institutionalized fashion had these local bodies with elected representatives remained functional.
The argument that the local elections would derail or deviate the constitution writing process is extremely preposterous to say the least. First, the CA couldn't draft a constitution in four years of last CA where such polls were not even contemplated. And, there is no real trade-off between these two goals - namely, the constitution writing and holding the local polls. The CA can without aberration continue the process of writing the constitution. The Election Commission (EC) and the government can handle the logistics and other preparations for the local polls. The argument that local elections impair the possible political cooperation among the political parties is outright unpolitical. All the forces who believe in the rules of democracy cannot harbour animosity just for the fact that people voted for one party against other.
On the contrary, local polls and the constitution writing, if managed wisely, can be mutually reinforcing and complementary processes. It is repeated in uncountable instances that without a framework of state restructuring incorporated, the constitution writing process cannot be completed. These local democratic bodies can serve as the real feedback institutions for delineations of the provinces and other administrative and electoral units. More importantly, these institutions will be the real tool to manage unrealistically spiraling ambitions of people with largely misrepresented notions of rights, inclusiveness and reservations, among many other.
It appears that all contentious issues on constitution writing will not be resolved by the sitting CA and all major leaders have categorically said that these issues will be resolved through a referendum if required. This is a clear hint that completion of constitution writing may take several years. If such a scenario is imminent, it is illogical to stop the local elections from taking place now. Suppose, even if this CA completes the constitution drafting process, the promulgation of the same is not going to be easy. But, if these legitimate institutions are in place, they can help to create an atmosphere for relatively smoother promulgation. An elected political leader is far more responsible apparatus of the state mechanism than the one left in the streets just to protest on every petty issue.
Even in the worst case scenario, say, the local elections delay the constitution writing by a few months; it is still a risk worth to be taken. With the local bodies in operation, people can feel the real strength and utility of the democracy than the distant CA or a vague constitution. It is however not to mean to undermine the importance of the constitution.
It is good to know that EC has reportedly started preparation for all required legal backdrop, including the amendment in the Interim Constitution 2007 to include the provisions for local polls.
Everyone should be convinced that no democratic exercise of any fashion would weaken the democracy. A pragmatic rethinking is required on the part of the Maoists and real courage in government to translate its own promise of holding local elections into reality, sooner.
The writer is former editor of Aarthik Abhiyan National Daily.
