Getting
Nepal a new constitution before 2014 is over is the most important task at hand. All other issues are secondary. Country before party, now and always. That has to be the goal of the NC and the UML. That also has to be the goal of the
Maoists and the Madhesi parties.
The way things are shaping up, it might be possible for the NC to form a government that includes the Maoists and the Madhesis. I am simply pointing out the political arithmetic. There is a silver lining to the wide margin defeat of the Maoists. If the margin had been less wide, a NC-UML two party government would have been a foregone conclusion. But because the margins are wide and there was no pre-poll alliance between the NC and the UML, a NC-Maoist-Madhesi government also looks possible.
Or you could form a NC-Maoist government, and give the presidency to Mahantha Thakur and the speakership to the UML. Nembang, anyone?
Sushil Koirala for PM, Narayan Kaji or Mahara for DPM, Mahantha Thakur for president, Nembang for Speaker.
Both sides have to be flexible on the federalism question. I think we might be looking at about four states in the Terai and another four states in the Hills/Mountains. 30 Madhesi parties that have not been able to become one party do not have a moral right to talk about a single
Madhesh pradesh, not anymore.
The two Maoists should unite. What will bring them together is a vision that Nepal will be made a
multi-party democracy of state funded parties. How many votes you get in a national election will decide how much money you get from the state. And a party will have no other source of income. That agenda should be enough for the Baidya group to stop dreaming of another revolution.
All Madhesi parties should immediately start the exercise of launching a single Madhesi party.
If the two Maoist parties become one, and if the 30 Madhesi parties become one political party, these two parties will be the prime beneficiary of the local and state elections that will be held in perhaps April 2015. They will ride the anti-incumbency wave then. People like
Hridayesh Tripathy who lost this election will show up as Chief Ministers perhaps.
That is the best bet for the Maoists and the Madhesis.
The most important lesson though is that the three million
Nepalis who have been kicked off the
voter list need to be brought back onto that list. That should be the number one gripe of the Maoists and the Madhesi parties, and they should do something about it.
It is easy math. There are 30 million people in Nepal. More than half of Nepal is less than 30 years old. Which means roughly half of the population is of voting age. So if there are 15 million Nepalis of voting age, and only 12 million were on the list, that means three million were disenfranchised. And those three million were mostly of the DaMaJaMa background. Which means most of those three million would have voted for the Maoists and the Madhesi parties.
The entire country and all parties have to work to get those three million onto the voter list. It's just wrong to disenfranchise people. In a country where elections are won and lost by a few thousand votes routinely, and often times with a few hundred votes, the impact of kicking three million people off the voter list can not be exaggerated.
A Majority Government Of The NC And The UML
Election 2013: The People Have Spoken
