Speaking at an interaction on
the bill of Provincial Assembly Election Act, he maintained that as the number
of political parties was ever growing, it will be easier to manage the single
ballot paper.
According to the Election
Commission of Nepal (ECN), the number of political parties registered has
crossed 180.
The new bill has proposed a
threshold of 1.5 per cent for proportional representation election system. As
per the provision, any political party must garner at least 1.5 per cent of
total votes cast in order to elect its candidates to the parliament.
This is in line with the House
of Representatives Election bill which will be forwarded to the government next
week.
The Commission is collecting
stakeholders’ opinions and suggestions on the bill.
Although the fringe parties
demanded to remove the threshold, big political parties and other experts
demanded to raise the threshold percentage to 3 per cent minimum.
They opined that many a
political party created problem in election management while the smaller
parties claimed that the state should not suppress the alternative ideology
that emerge with the new political parties.
Nepal Congress lawmaker Min
Bishwokarma said that the threshold was necessary as there was a growing trend
to register the political parties just to occupy position at various local
level committees and development projects which was having adverse effects in
the development works.
Other experts stated that
election without threshold would promote caste, religion, ethnicity and region
based small parties which might prove counterproductive for the social harmony.
The new bill has proposed 33 per
cent women representation in the provincial elections.
If less than required women
candidates are elected in the First-Past-the-Post election, the deficit number
would be fulfilled by the proportionate representation election by selecting
the women candidates from the list furnished by the political parties.
However, CPN-UML leader Raghu
Panta asked the Commission to make provision so as to force the political
parties to field women candidates in the FPTP elections and experts of various
sectors and reputed personalities should be proposed in the PR elections.
Spokesperson of RPP-Nepal
Rajaram Shrestha questioned whether the elections could be held on time.
According to the constitutional
provisions, the government must hold three elections – local bodies, Provincial
Assembly and Federal Parliament – within one and a half years.
The election management body has
said that if the government could implement the Report on the Local Bodies
Restructuring by mid-September and local election related laws were passed the
Legislature-Parliament by the same period.
Addressing the opening ceremony
of the two day interaction on Tuesday, Dr. Yadav had made it clear that if the
government couldn’t finalize the demarcation of local bodies by the end of this
year, elections couldn’t be conducted.
The ECN has forwarded the six
election related bills to the government and other five bills are being
formulated and being discussed upon.
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