 ANUP PRAKASH |
Elections in Nepal have never been completely free or fair, and everyone has a favourite example of vote-buying, ballot-stuffing, or booth-capturing. Goons mobilised by political parties often lock up rival candidates or block roads on election day so opposition voters can't make it to the polling centres. There were lots of proxy, underage and multiple voters in the 2008 CA election.
These are just the visible irregularities, but what ultimately determines the election result in Nepal are things far more basic: most Nepalis do not know how the voting system works. There is a lot of mass voting where villagers are mobilised by local bigwigs in return for payment in cash or kind from candidates. Like in a lot of other things, we have weak institutional memory and quickly forget the corruption history or criminal record of candidates. Voter opinion is influenced by few weeks of campaigning, misinformation and vicious propaganda. Whoever makes the biggest noise has an edge.
Parties know this better than anyone else, and campaign financing has become an integral part of the process, and this is usually ill-gotten or are donations from businesses who extract their pound of flesh once the party is elected. In this way, elections become a key feature in perpetuating the cycle of corruption. Until a candidate or party's victory depends less on the ability to spend money and more on performance, credibility and integrity, elections will never be the determining facet of democracy. Electoral reform, therefore, has to be integrated into the implementation of the new constitution.
The erosion of the image of parliamentary parties in the 1990s is in large part explained by the lack of performance and their behaviour during successive elections. The incumbent party used the state machinery, muscle and money at election time. This was one of the reasons the Maoists went to war, arguing that the entrenched elite used elections just to shuffle the deck among themselves.
Alas, the party that sought to change all this through armed struggle is now behaving no differently. The Maoists used to believe that political power flowed out the barrel of a gun, now they know it flows out of a cash machine. The Maoists like to portray themselves as the party of the poor, but are now the richest ones around. Leaving aside our austere Mustang-riding prime minister, Maoist leaders drive around in the most expensive cars, live in the most luxurious mansions and have a well-known penchant for the good life.
Like the people they tried to physically eliminate until five years ago, the Maoists have understood how money translates to political power. The desperation of Maoist and Madhesi leaders in the current coalition to rake it in is not just because of personal greed, it has a lot to do with ensuring cash flow for the next elections. Every sector of economic life is fair game for "pre-paid" kickbacks, cuts and extortion: casinos, real estate, unions, foreign employment.
If this is what the party that espouses the dictatorship of the proletariats looks like, imagine what the others are up to. If political leaders in Nepal have almost zero credibility, it is because their loyalties lie not with the people but with themselves and those who funded their election campaigns.
The epidemic of corruption today is a direct result of the conviction among political leaders that future elections can easily be rigged or bought, and there is no need to deliver development to the constituencies. The absence of local elections has 'democratised' corruption right down to the grassroots. The infamous all-party mechanism at VDCs and DDCs have become synonymous with massive and systematic corruption where local units of the parties are in cahoots to loot budgets.
