January 29, 2006	Sunday	Zilhaj 28, 1426

KATHMANDU: The Nepali king’s roadmap to peace faced serious setback on Thursday after no one emerged to contest many posts for the Feb. 8 local elections and hundreds of activists were arrested as week-long protests continued. The local polls are the first step in the return to peace and democracy pledged by King Gyanendra when he ousted his own handpicked prime minister in a bloodless coup on Feb.1, 2005. Next month’s vote is supposed to be followed by parliamentary elections in 2007.

But a boycott by a group of seven political parties that took more than 90 per cent of votes in the country’s last parliamentary vote, threats from powerful Maoist rebels and a nation-wide strikes called by the parties on registration day combined to limit the turnout of candidates.

“It is our success as there is not a single candidacy filed by persons having political understanding and affiliated with the (seven) parties,” Pradip Nepal, spokesman for the Communist Party of Nepal’s Marxist-Leninist wing, told journalists. In Kathmandu, the largest and most secure city in this small country wedged between Nepal and China, only 98 nominations were filed for 177 seats, including 10 for mayor and eight for deputy mayor.

The spokesman for the government’s Election Commission (EC), Tej Muni Bajracharya, said the office was satisfied with the turnout. The EC will designate a second nomination day in those wards where no candidates registered, he added. But Bajracharya also told the Nepali Times newspaper that not everyone who wanted to be registered.

“We got complaints from some of the wannabe candidates that they could not get their names registered because of the ‘bandh’ (general strike),” said Bajracharya, “but the main hindrance was the psychology of fear.”

The Maoist rebels, who control up to three-fourths of the countryside outside of Nepal’s municipalities, promised to disrupt the elections after it became clear that King Gyanendra would not heed calls to cancel the vote and join a peace pact signed late last year between the insurgents and the seven-party alliance.

Since he took power, the monarch has surrounded himself with seasoned politicians — many from the pre-democracy ‘Panchayat’ system — rejected all calls to sit with the Maoists and parties and even threatened to brand the latter “terrorists” if they cooperated with the rebels.

King Gyanendra has virtually ignored international calls to restore democracy and initiate peace talks and has cleverly answered cuts in military aid from India, the United States and UK with threatening overtures to their rivals China and Pakistan.

This week, Beijing veered slightly from its stance that Nepal’s deteriorating political situation was an “internal” matter, saying it “hopes all parties in Nepal can narrow their differences through dialogue”. At the same time the rumour mill here turned furiously with speculation that the monarch would soon make a deal that would see the Nepali Congress party return to power for the third time since 1990’s democratic revolution.

But no deal was made. Instead, on Tuesday the local chairman of one party contesting the elections, Bijay Lal Das, was killed in the southeastern town of Janakpur. After his murder, blamed on the Maoists, the government consented to requests to ensure life insurance cover for all candidates.

On Thursday, another candidate for mayor from the same Nepal Sadbhavana Party was reportedly kidnapped by Maoists in midwestern Bard-iya.—Dawn/IPS News Service