Get on with it

Now that the second Constituent Assembly elections have been held and the results declared, it is time everybody in the country accepted the results for what they are, and started working on completing the tasks at hand. Unfortunately, this is not happening.

Ever since it emerged that the Nepali Congress and the UML have become the two largest parties in the new Assembly by far, several people in Nepal—including many journalists and those in the intelligentsia—have been talking about the regressive nature of these two political parties and what that may mean for the country. A few of these supposed neutrals had begun to lament even as the results had only just started trickling in, and started making calls for more progressive policymaking from the Congress and the UML.

These were the two parties that were most maligned by the other political parties. They were constantly described as regressive and as comprising of old fogeys. The failure of the first Constituent Assembly to write the constitution on time was blamed squarely on these two political parties. Here are two parties that only want to perpetuate the hegemony of the higher castes, it was said.

All of the above may have been true. But the fact is they have emerged victorious in these elections despite all of this. This goes to show that they do have a clear mandate from the people who approve of their policies, regressive or otherwise.

The success of these two parties, however, is now very conveniently being attributed not to their manifestoes and their policies, but to the electorate’s disappointment with the performance of the Maoists. It is being claimed that the polity’s disenchantment with the Maoists has worked in the favour of the Congress and the UML but there is a clear reluctance to admit even consider that it may have been the less destabilising policies of the Congress and the UML that may have appealed to the electorate.

Some have even suggested that the Congress and the UML should not forget the aspirations of the people and should not revert to their regressive agendas. Does it just escape them completely that the so-called regressive parties have actually won an election, and that they have beaten all the so-called progressive parties rather comprehensively?

In these circumstances, we in the media have the responsibility to analyse the election results and understand the sentiment of the electorate, rather than make assumptions about their voting preferences. The view that the Congress and the UML did well in the election only because of the ineptitude of the other political parties is a hypothesis that cannot be tested. Hence to make this claim authoritatively is misleading and assumes the voter is stupid.

It is time for us to accept what the electorate wants, rather than assume what it does.

 

(This column first appeared in the Himalayan Times on 22 December 2013).