The Constituent Assembly (CA) members in Nepal have just finished voting for the first ceremonial President of the newly declared republican country. There are three presidential candidates: Ram Raja Prasad Singh backed by the Maoists, Ram Varian Yadav of the Nepali Congress and Ram Prit Pashwan of the United Marxist-Leninist (UML). In the 601-member CA, 578 elected members cast their confidential votes. Some of the members are yet to be elected through the by-elections while 16 of them boycotted the election, reports say.
According to government-owned Radio Nepal, the vote count begins at 5 p.m. According to analysts, it is not easy to predict the victory of any particular party as even a few votes can decide. However, the political conversation market expects a tough competition between the Nepali Congress and the Maoists.
Maoist-backed candidate Ram Raja Prasad Singh is a veteran republican leader, who had deployed time bombs at the four gates of the Royal Palace in 1985. As the royal regime declared death sentence against him, he stayed in India where he has many of his relatives. Singh had admittedly helped Maoists during the decade-long armed insurgency in Nepal.
Earlier, the current Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and the defeated UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal wanted to become the first president of the country with the consensus among the parties. As the Maoists declined to support any powerful party leaders as the ceremonial president, there was no consensus regarding the president. The three parties fielded a presidential candidate of their own.
The Nepalis are eagerly waiting for the result because they are going to have the first president of the nation after the abolition of feudal monarchy.
Despite the election, the Nepalis are yet to wait for the logical completion of the peace process. The bitterness created among the major political parties regarding the presidential candidature is likely to affect the coming formation of a new government. The caretaker government has been working three months after the election of the CA. The existing volatile situation of the country has demanded the urgent formation of a new government as mandated by the election of the CA that took place on 10 April 2008.
First published in www.nowpublic.com
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