Nilkantha Upreti, the Chief Election Commissioner, very truly pointed out recently that local bodies are the foundations of democracy. Technically, Nepal is a democracy; but we need to hold local-level elections to translate democracy into a reality that common people can relate to. What we have at present is a democracy that is quite far from this ‘reality that common men can relate to.’ The current system has created a disconnect between the people and the politicians. The people-politician link is missing; the tax-benefit link is missing; the democracy-development link is missing!
Why this has happened in present-day Nepal is not too difficult to fathom if we take some time to delve into what politics is about. Politics, from the perspective of individual politicians, never has to be about delivering; a politician just has to be good at selling promises. After all, how many votes a politician garners is a good measure of how successful an individual is, as a politician. And what earns them votes? Promises, not deliveries!
Cases to validate this belief are aplenty in contemporary Nepalese politics. All major parties promised to deliver the constitution within a year. They also promised to end load-shedding within two to three years, and three to five years, in Kathmandu and Nepal, respectively. The biggest party in the current government even promised to hold the local-level elections within the first six months of its coming to power. Oh, them promises sans delivery!
Read more of Samriddhi’s Akash Shrestha’s post here!