Democracy For Nepal: Direct Elections, One Seat For Every 100,000 People, Reservations, Primaries

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Direct Elections, One Seat For Every 100,000 People, Reservations, Primaries

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Proposed Republican Constitution 2006

What will be the size of the next parliament? How will parliamentarians get elected? How can the parliament's composition be made fair? What will be the most democratic way? These questions are being debated with some passion.

Some of the most offensive proposals have been to get one person elected per district, and then have another category of people through a more proportional representation. That idea is a conspiracy against Madhesis. Only 16 of the 75 districts are in the Terai that has half the country's population.

One Seat For Every 100,000 People

Democracy means one person, one vote. The first thing we have to settle on is to demarcate the country into constituencies to respect that basic tenet. So if the country has 28 million people, you are looking at 280 seats. And an autonomous Election Commission should draw the seats. District boundaries have to be ignored. Constituencies should look like circles or squares or close approximations. No partisan gerrymandering.

Direct Elections

There are people trying to learn the wrong lessons from the US and Israel. In the US they have the electoral college idiocy. Those slave owning founders designed that. The American progressives fantasize about having direct elections for president and getting rid of the electoral college. We should not adopt what they are trying to get rid of.

All parliamentarians should be directly elected, as the president. And if there be two chambers in the parliament, members of the upper chamber should also all be directly elected.

We really have to watch out for the tendency to vest a lot of power in the presidents of the political parties. They already have too much.

There is also an attempt to imitate Israel. So if there are 280 seats, each party would submit a list of 280 names. And the people would vote for political parties. The entire country would be one constituency. If party A gets 50% of the votes, it will get 140 of the seats, and the first 140 names on its list would get into the parliament.

This arrangement would stink. These are not direct elections. Too much power ends up with the key political party leaders who might prepare those lists. Ariel Sharon of Israel has tried to get rid of this arrangement in Israel. He thinks the arrangement is disgusting. He wants direct elections in Israel.

There has to be a direct relationship between an elected official and the people who voted for him or her.

State Funds For Parties In Direct Proportion To Votes Earned

But I do understand it is unfair if a party that might get 20% of the votes ends up with only 10% of the seats. And we can not get rid of direct elections.

So there is this proposal. Parties should be prohibited from raising private funds. Instead each national party would get state funds in direct proportion to the number of votes earned in a national election.

So if party A gets 30% of the votes, but only 20% of the seats through direct elections, it will still get 30% of the funds. And if party B gets 40% of the votes, and 50% of the seats, that party will still get only 40% of the funds. I think that would be a compromise arrangement between direct elections and proportional representation.

Reservations

Nepal should become the first country to recognize not only individual rights, but also group rights. There should be a formula.

During the census, each person gets to choose a few collective identities. One would be the gender identity. Then there should be a primary identity, and a secondary identity. So a person could be female, and a Dalit, and a Madhesi.

Gender would stand in a category of its own. And then the primary identity would come into play. If a group's representation in the parliament is less than 40% of its representation in the country's population, it would qualify for reservations. As soon as the representation hits 80%, the reservations would end.

For women, the reservation would be 33%. For other groups, it would be 25%. And there would be overlap between the gender identity, and the primary identity.

What is a reserved seat? Say if there is a Dalit reserved seat, all the political parties will still compete with each other, but all the candidates must be Dalit.

And reserved seats may not exceed 50% of the total.

In the short run, you are targeting the DaMaJaMa. Dalit, Madhesi, Janajati, Mahila. But a few decades from now, who knows, the Bahuns might qualify. Because it is a formula.

Ultimately we would hope there would be no need for reservations at all for any group. In a free market for votes, all groups should end up getting fairly represented. That has to be the goal.

Primaries

This is key, and the one proposal least likely to be entertained by the party leaders. A party's ticket may only be given by members of that party at the said level and below through a democratic process. The idea of party presidents giving out tickets is undemocratic, and has to be scrapped.

Power to the people.

In The News

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PAC to grill former communication minister, state minister, 84 journalists
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Nepali journalist wins journalism award in the US prestigious South Asian Journalism Award in America ..... SAJA
Full text of the letter written by the Nepal govt. to the UN

Nepal king to seek divine help in India: Report DailyIndia.com, NY is offering puja by proxy at a shrine near India's temple town of Varanasi ...... an Indian yogi identified as Harihar Swami, would be offering a special worship at Vindhyavasini Dham on behalf of the king to seek the goddess' blessings for Nepal's royalty in decline....... another Indian yogi, Barfani Baba, who reportedly has an ashram in Hardwar, a prime pilgrimage destination in northern India, recommended the swami to the palace. ...... The baba in turn was introduced to the royal family by his disciple Mohan Bahadur Shahi, who is King Gyanendra's brother-in-law...... Barfani Baba had earlier asked for Rs 16,00,000 ($ 34,000) to come up with a really effective service but Harihar Swami swung the deal after he offered to do it for Rs 400,000 ....... Another Indian god man, identified only as Kali Baba, is reported to have access to the palace and was sent for during King Gyanendra's direct rule to mediate between the isolated monarch and Indian political leaders...... The Nepal royal family's belief in divine powers is legendary. During his 15-month rule as head of the government, the king made several disastrous decisions, said to have been prompted by his army of astrologers....... One of the advices - to take a trip across the ocean to propitiate the stars - reportedly made the king go on a three-week long African safari at a time his kingdom was in a critical stage. ......... The hired aircraft flew for 48 hours, taking the king to Tunisia, Burundi, Nigeria and Egypt, at the rate of $ 11,000 per hour.
Nepal plans to hold constituent assembly elections by mid-April ... Khaleej Times, United Arab Emirates The letter marks the first time the government has publicly given a time-frame for the constituent assembly elections. ..... Koirala listed five points on which they would like UN assistance, including “monitoring of the combatants of the Maoists and decommissioning of their arms” and monitoring that the army stays in barracks and remains neutral...... In addition, Nepal requested continued human rights abuse monitoring by the UN and urged it to observe the election to the constituent assembly.
Nepal Parties Form Steering Committee OhmyNews International, South Korea the steering Committee comprises all the top members of the Seven Parties ....... CP Mainali said that he proposed that the alternative to Parliament could be a National Public's Council with wide participation of activists......

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