KATHMANDU, April 7 (AFP): The UN appealed to Nepal's former Maoist rebels and other parties to halt violence to ensure fair voting as campaigning wound up on Monday for landmark polls this week that will decide the nation's future.
The elections on Thursday are being held to create an assembly that is slated to rewrite the constitution and is also expected to remove King Gyanendra and end his country's 240-year-old dynasty.
“Intimidation of voters must stop” and the election must be “violence-free,” UN spokesman Kieran Dwyer said hours before a bomb went off near the United Nations mission in the capital. Police said one person was wounded in the blast.
The run-up to the elections in the impoverished country of 27 million people has been marred by violence by all political parties.
But Dwyer's statement came on the heels of a UN report which singled out the Maoists, taking part in elections for the first time after fighting a decade-long civil war, as the worst perpetrators of pre-poll violence.
The Maoists have been threatening voters by saying they can find out who they voted for, vowing to punish those who cast ballots against them, according to local journalists.
In Rolpa in west Nepal, a Maoist bastion during the revolt that ended in 2006, “former rebels have told villagers they can see who they're voting for through binocular cameras in the sky,” journalist Kashiram Dangi said.
“Illiterate and naive villagers tend to believe in these rumours,” said the journalist who works for Nepal's largest private media house Kantipur.
People going to the polls need to do so without fear of reprisal, the UN spokesman said.
“Voters must have confidence in the secrecy of the ballot so that they can vote according to their conscience,” Dwyer said.
The Maoists have said they will respect the election results but that they will launch massive protests if they feel the polls have been rigged against them.
About 1,000 international observers will be in Nepal by polling day, making this election the closest-watched in the nation's history.
But the ultra-leftists' second-in-command Baburam Bhattarai warned that if there was widespread malpractice during the elections, the Maoists would quickly take over.
In an effort to ensure the polls are peaceful, the government has mobilised tens of thousands of extra police nationwide and banned the sale of alcohol for a week.

Tags: Nepal,Maoists