Election code violation
The Election Commission under Chief Commissioner Ayodhee Prasad Yadav has acted more like a government puppet than a neutral arbiter of elections. When former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, back in February, first declared local elections, the commission controversially delayed imposing election code by a week, to give the ruling parties enough time to transfer CDOs and police personnel to their key constituencies to turn the elections in their favor. There have since been countless instances of open violation of election code—more transfers, cabinet ministers taking part in electoral rallies, etc—and yet the commission has done nothing to punish the code violators. When, after the first phase of local election on May 14, some Maoist cadres tore up ballot papers that were being counted in Bharatpur, Chitwan, the commission, instead of acting immediately, inexplicably dithered for a week. And now the five election commissioners, in an egregious violation of election code, have colluded to secure the transfer of commission Secretary Gopinath Mainali, apparently because he refused to include the money that was being set aside for the purchase of luxury cars for the commissioners as an ‘election-related’ expense.
When soul traveled Beyond Her Eyes ...
The transfer was made just six days before the second round of local election on June 28. Even though Mainali has been charged with “obstructing the election process”, commission insiders say he has done nothing of the kind and in fact Mainali had been diligently working to make the June 28 vote a success. Mainali has now been replaced in the commission by someone of questionable character, perhaps because he could be more amenable to demands, legitimate or otherwise, of the five commissioners. The EC purchases dozens of vehicles during each election. It is a routine practice. Yet the commission already has 72 vehicles, and many of them are idle. But instead of using available vehicles, the commission seems to be in a mood to purchase new ones, especially five new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado SUVs for the five commissioners. Mainali objected. But difference over the purchase of these vehicles was not the only reason for his hasty exit. Differences between the commission and its secretariat—the bureaucratic arm headed by a government secretary—had steadily grown after the ballot-tearing incident in Bharatpur.
The five election commissioners were so suspicious of the secretariat that they had reportedly asked the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police to put secretariat officials under surveillance. These shenanigans inside the commission, bang in the middle of the election season, does not give Nepali people confidence that the elections in which they will cast their votes will be free and fair. With the election commissioners themselves putting pressure on the government to make illegal transfers, and blatantly violating the election code in the process, no wonder our political parties have simply chosen to ignore its warnings on code violation. It is a tragedy that the commission is so compromised even as it is entrusted with holding the three sets of elections that are arguably the most important in the history of democratic Nepal.
