Political manifestos

 The Himalayan Times

28 April 2022

Political manifestos

Nepal will hold its second local level elections on 13 May after it entered into the federal structure. It will be electing 586 mayors and deputy mayors in the municipalities, and 920 chairs and vice chairs in the rural municipalities. As many as 33,715 chairpersons and office bearers will also be elected from the 6,743 wards. The first local elections were held in three phases on May 14, June 28 and September 18, 2017 in six metropolitan cities, 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 municipalities and 460 rural municipalities in line with the new constitution promulgated in 2015.

It was and is not unusual to see political parties participating in any level of elections bringing out their political manifestos that are full of promises to be fulfilled if their candidates get elected. Such promises were never fully fulfilled in the past. All the parties including the NC participating in the upcoming local level elections have made public their manifestos “NC promises good governance in manifesto” and nominated their candidates accordingly. Over 137,000 candidacies were filed with much vigour for various positions for the May 13 elections as per the Election Commission “Over 137,000 candidacies filed for May 13 election: EC”.

Many new faces nominated by major and fringe political parties will be contesting for various positions putting forward their parties’ manifestos. Considering the politically blurred images of the senior leaders of major political parties in the past and the level of political awareness of the voters, it will not be easy for their contesting candidates to face and convince the voters. This situation might bring new faces into the main political arena, which could be a huge blow to the major political parties that never get tired of talking about democracy, socialism and safeguarding 2015 constitution.

Rai Biren Bangdel

Maharajgunj