(Courtesy: Kalyan Dev Bhattarai)
Today the whole country is revolving around the issue of a constitutional assembly (CA) and the politicians are doing their best to deceive the innocent democracy and peace loving Nepalese citizens to fool them in the name of CA.
There can be no doubt on the need of CA at this juncture of the country, which was the demand of the Maoist and wishes of the people expressed during the Andolan 2062-63. Many intellectual like us supported the demand of CA from the beginning, when the so-called political leaders of seven parties were against the CA. But unfortunately, today Maoists are not only fooled by the seven political parties but the CA is also being postponed indefinitely and its basic essence is being contorted and mislead.
The essences of the CA are People's participation, people's concurrences on the issues, wide representation, and is basically different from the ritual parliamentary elections. Taking into consideration the methodology adopted for the proposed CA in the interim constitution, one can say that the so-called CA will only be a mockery of it, fulfilling the covert wishes of the corrupt, selfish politicians, as it does not fulfil any of the essence required of a CA.
The wide participation of the people being one of the main essences of the CA, how an assembly election, where only the political parties' representatives are allowed to participate barring the people's participation can claim itself as a CA election? The interim constitution provides that only the politicians will represent the CA. This means only maximum of 3 % of the population will be participating in the process excluding the rest of the people. The total cumulative number of levy-paying cadres of all the political parties in the country will not be more that 7 lacks.
Simply by voting a political party, the voters do not become the members of the party. Such vote is the compulsion due to faith in democracy and is only an endorsement for the selection of thieves from the bunch of dacoits, who stands in the election as party representatives. It is only intellectual bankruptcy to consider such endorsement as selection of people's representation. 97 % of the people are not members of any political parties and only endorse the party candidates with the hope that they will act as per their declared manifestos, which has proven to be wrong every time, so far.
I wonder when and how the so-called political representatives turns out to be people's representative as claimed by politicians, when they stand and nominate themselves in the election as party representative, ask for support and act as party representatives in the assembly?
The other essence of CA is that it should be able to decide, once for all, on the major social, economical political etc. issues of the country. However none of the political parties have put forward single issue for the verdict of the people. There are many political issues like the declaration of republican State, PM's direct election, barring the parliamentarians from being ministers, confiscation of properties accumulated without legitimate source, capital punishment for the heinous crimes, and many others. Politicians will never put such important issues forward, as they are in politics to fool the people for their vested and selfish interests.
If the CA is not able to decide on such important social, political economical and regional issues, the so-called CA will be only a fraud. Before we go for election of CA, we should put forward all the major political, social and economical and regional issues to be solved through the people's verdict. Unfortunately, our so-called CA is only for fooling the people, as the new Constitution is to be prepared not by the people's representatives but by the representatives of the political parties. Hence they will not make decisions on important issues affecting people's lives.
The other equally important essence of CA is wide representation of different sectors, covering professions, castes, religions, regions, sex, etc. In our so-called CA only and only politicians are represented barring others from various sectors. From the past experiences, one can easily say that the nominations will be from the same corrupt, useless bunch of party cadres whose only objective is to loot the country's treasury. If Maoists think they can make new Nepal with the help of such proven dacoits, then it is as foolish a belief of putting 60-70 new potatoes in a sack of rotten potatoes and hoping that the whole sack of potato will turn out to be good.
The other essence of CA is that it should be different from parliamentary elections as CA is not to rule the country but to prepare the ruling document. It is against the simple rule of law that those who rule the country should not be allowed to prepare the ruling documents. Unfortunately, in our case, same politicians who rule the country are also allowed to prepare the ruling document. In such situation, to expect that the rulers will prepare a document that is beneficial to people will be foolish. Their interest will be to fulfil their vested interests and will make such a document that provides them enough avenues to loot the country's treasury.
With these notions, I suggest the coming CA should be for the people, by the people and of the people, barring the political parties from participating as political entities and to stand as an independent Nepali citizen, prepare the constitution and hand it over to the political parties to run the country as per the constitution with the full support of people.
1 comment:
A provocative and well-reasoned article. The idea of people being elected to the CA as independents, not aligned with any political party,sounds refreshing. But is it realistic? For instance, even if Girijaji and Dahalji stand for the elections, who can forget their political affiliation? Perhaps the political parties - and I mean ALL parties, not just SPA-M - could present before the people their solid platforms addressing the various issues mentioned in this article. Security, Poverty, Monarchy, Integration of all ethnic groups into the the body politic - let us see what each political party promises to the people on these and other important issues. Then let us make sure that "the people" is adequately educated on the democratic voting process. If necessary (and I know this is a controversial point), let the UN conduct an un-biased election, like they did successfully in Cambodia. Then perhaps Nepal has a fair chance to survive as a multi-party democracy with (in my opinion) a constitutional monarchy.
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