'Election date should be fixed by law'

Kathmandu, Aug. 5

Former Chief Election Commissioner, Bhojraj Pokharel, has said that it is necessary to set the date of the federal, province and local level elections in the law.

"If the date of the election is fixed in the law, it will be easier for the candidates to be selected early and for the Election Commission to prepare," he said at a programme organised by the Centre for Media Research in the Capital on Friday.

According to Pokharel, since the date of the election was not fixed in the law, after the announcement of the election, it became difficult for the parties to select candidates and pressure was created on the Election Commission to make preparation.

He also stated that there is a tendency of ignoring the code of conduct and ceiling of the election expenses while more budget is spent on the security than on election management. So, it is necessary for the political parties to be accountable.

Mentioning that code of conduct and fines are different things, he said that a separate court can be formed to look at the punishment and fines for the election-related crimes.

Researcher Tilak Pathak informed that during the local level elections, media gave priority to the alliance between political parties, problems that appeared in the alliance, selection of candidates, representation of women candidates, violation of the code of conduct, expectations of the people at the local level, expenses and violence incurred in the election, and the delay in the counting of votes. He said that the research showed that the media has less attention on issues such as candidates' background, election manifestos and people's expectations, and election expenses.

Ishwari Bhattarai, a political analyst at the Democracy Research Center Nepal, informed that there were problems in the local level elections in terms of staff mobilisation, voter ID cards, compliance with the code of conduct, voter education, voter confidentiality, polling stations, and election expenses.

He said that there are challenges in the implementation of rules related to election supervision, non-uniformity, setting the number for supervision, and not allowing the supervisor to supervise many polling stations.

 Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 6 August 2022.