For those interested, here is the UNDP 2010 Annual Report from Nepal that describes what I was working on last year w/ my wonderful colleagues. It's all part of our effort to ensure greater participation and engagement across Nepal in the drafting of the new secular, federal, democratic republican constitution -- based on the inclusive priorities set forth in the 2007 Interim Constitution.
Alas, however, this constitution for a 'New Nepal' has been delayed as it was meant to be promulgated a year ago, according to that Interim Constitution. The Constituent Assembly (CA) is now in its second extension (until August 31st, 2011), but there is limited confidence that the CA and the major political parties will complete their work in the next month to share at least a draft constitution.
If not, major questions will be raised about how and when the CA will complete this work, as well as finalize the outstanding aspects of the peace process. So much work has already gone into both the peace and constitution drafting process that we can only hope (and pray...) that the senior leaders are able to resolve their differences and permit dear Nepal to step peacefully and successfully into its future...
-----------------------------------------------------
Citizens’ Participation in Nepal's Constitution-Making
The 'Support to Participatory Constitution Making in Nepal' project’s Democratic Dialogues and radio programmes informed citizens and key stakeholders about the constitution making process.
Democratic Dialogues
In 2009, SPCBN supported the holding of 2,274 local Democratic Dialogues ('Loktantrik Sambad') that raised awareness and provided local inputs into the making of the new constitution.
The plan in 2010 was to run dialogues to gather comments on the draft constitution. The absence of the draft meant that the 2010 Democratic Dialogues provided an opportunity to disseminate information and collect opinions on the 11 CA Thematic Committee reports, which represented the progress to then on constitution making. These dialogues were held at VDC, constituency levels and were attended by 259,708 citizens.
VDC and Constituency Dialogues — Between March and September 2010 dialogues were held in Nepal’s 3,915 Village Development Committees. They were run by trained facilitators from 18 consortia of civil society organisations. Ninety master trainers trained over 1,300 facilitators on imparting information to people with limited literacy and involving less vocal participants.
After each dialogue, reports were prepared on the main concerns raised and suggestions made. These reports were then compiled into 240 constituency-wise reports, which were presented to the CA leadership and members.
Feedback to the Constituent Assembly — Reports were prepared on the points raised at the Constituency Dialogues, after which a report was compiled with the major points from all 240 reports. In November 2010, the 240 constituency reports and a compiled report were submitted to the Constituent Assembly, the CA Chair and individual members representing the opinions of the general public on the shape the constitution should take. Interactions were held with political leaders to inform them about the contents of the main report.
Federalism Dialogues — Federal Dialogues were held in each of the (proposed) capitals of the 14 new provinces proposed by the CA State Restructuring Committee. These were attended by more than 1,150 politicians and civil society representatives. The value of these meetings soon became apparent as amongst all these leading district and regional
level decision makers very few said they had a good knowledge of the proposed new governance structures before the meetings.
Two examples of democratic dialogues for an inclusive constitution:
A VDC Dialogue: Renu Gupta and Raghunath Das were one of the 17 teams of facilitators that facilitated Democratic Dialogues across Dhanusha district in 2010. During a dialogue in May 2010 in Bindi VDC the audience of Yadavs, Chaudharies, Mushahars and other communities listened to the presentations and offered their thoughts and suggestions. In response to the orientation on the report on the Distribution of Natural Resources, Financial Rights and Revenues:
• a former government official said that local resources should be managed by consumer groups as they know best;
• a district member of the Nepal Sadbhawana Party said that special provisions should be made for young widows and women from marginalized groups; and
• a school teacher asked how the new constitution would address the large gap in the quality of education between government and private schools.
A Constituency Dialogue: Some of the many issues raised at a dialogue held in August 2010 by the Madhesi NGO Federation in Bara district were as follows:
• A Third Gender person passionately called for the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people to be recognized in the new Constitution.
• Many participants called for changing the rules to allow younger and less educated people to become members of parliament as the current, mostly older, educated members do not understand their problems.
• The president of the local Bar Association called for the political parties to be more flexible to resolve the contentious issues to make the constitution on time.
Many of the most effective dialogues have been ones such as this that brought Constituent Assembly members face-to-face with the concerns of their constituents.
Showing posts with label Nepal constitution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nepal constitution. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Nepali Politics, May 2011 -- It's Complicated...
Nepal is currently enduring a lengthy post-conflict peace process that is girded by the issues of the Maoist cantonments and the drafting of a new constitution.
These two distinct processes are at the heart of the lengthy peace process that began in 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) followed by the promulgation of the Interim Constitution in 2007 and the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008.
The Constituent Assembly (CA) was supposed to complete the process of drafting and promulgating a new Nepali constitution by May 28th, 2010, but missed that deadline and is soon to miss the one year extension date of May 28th, 2011. Yet, the final agreements on the new constitution remain closely aligned to the final decisions on integration, rehabilitation and reintegration of the Maoist army which has also been delayed.
Until there is greater progress on the cantonments, the final constitutional issues will remain unresolved.
Along with the issue of the final detachment of the People’s Liberation Army from the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (UCPN/M) and the drafting of the new constitution, the major political parties continue to struggle over the issue of power-sharing in the government. The present government is led by Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (UML) supported by the UCPN/M and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), one of the important Madhesi party factions. However, there are deep rifts w/in each of the major parties while the three largest Madhesi parties have all split over the last year into separate factions.
It is likely as a price of extending the CA past the current May 28th deadline (as set and revised in the Interim Constitution 2007), the Congress Party, the second largest in the CA after the UCPN/M and before the UML, will insist upon a consensus government, including them, under a new prime minister. This political negotiation and calculation has taken up much of the various party leaders’ time over the past few months, leaving less time for resolving the remaining issues to draft a constitution by May 28th.
The situation will remain rather tenuous and uncertain until final negotiations and agreements are made right before the deadline of midnight on May 28th.
In addition to the various political struggles within and between these three major political parties, there are deep and unresolved issues among the major ethnic, linguistic and geographic communities in Nepal.
As all three of the major parties are lead and controlled by Brahmin-Chhetri men (15% of Nepal), there has been a growing movement of indigenous people (‘adivasi-janjati’), Madhesi (people from the terai or lowlands along the Indian border) and Dalits (the formerly untouchable castes) to ensure that the new constitution ensures the progressive restructuring of the state, including new provinces based on ethnic and linguistic boundaries, as well as much expanded reservations or proportionate representation for the historically marginalized.
Each of these communities are represented in the major parties, but they are rarely on the Central Committee or Politburos where real power lies. For that reason, the Madhesis, after a major political movement in early 2007 when they protested the lack of federalism in the Interim Constitution, formed new political parties to represent their interests. Neither the indigenous peoples (IP) nor the Dalits have successfully initiated such parties to-date, although they have a few very minor parties in the CA who vociferously advocate for their rights, in addition to the work done by the IP, Madhesi, Women’s and Dalit CA Caucuses.
Among these various political actors and parties, the UCPN/M, naturally, is considered either the most radical or progressive, depending on your political perspective. The UML is often seen as a more opportunist party willing to swing either right or left to align with the other two major parties for their own party or personal interests. The Congress, once the progressive, anti-feudal party of the 1960-80s, is now seen as more conservative in the political spectrum, the status quo ante party.
The three major Madhesi parties (MJF, Terai Loktantric and Sadbhavana) have all split into two separate factions each, contesting for influence and power among the major three parties. There are altogether 27 (or 28…) parties in the CA, including many with less than five representatives.
Along with state restructuring, proportional representation, some of the other major issues facing the country while drafting the new constitution include: the form of government (directly elected president, prime minister in a parliamentary system or a mixed system) and the type of electoral systems (first past the post, proportional or mixed system) and an independent judiciary.
As there have not been local elections since 1997, and the previous local governments were dissolved by a Congress government in 2002, all local government is being managed by government officials. This, too, is a serious, lingering issue as without locally elected leadership the structure of good governance and democratic government is deeply flawed. Yet the current political parties mostly say that there can only be local elections after the issues identified above are resolved and there are national, then provincial elections some three to five years in the future.
As they say, it's complicated...
These two distinct processes are at the heart of the lengthy peace process that began in 2006 with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Accord (CPA) followed by the promulgation of the Interim Constitution in 2007 and the Constituent Assembly elections in 2008.
The Constituent Assembly (CA) was supposed to complete the process of drafting and promulgating a new Nepali constitution by May 28th, 2010, but missed that deadline and is soon to miss the one year extension date of May 28th, 2011. Yet, the final agreements on the new constitution remain closely aligned to the final decisions on integration, rehabilitation and reintegration of the Maoist army which has also been delayed.
Until there is greater progress on the cantonments, the final constitutional issues will remain unresolved.
Along with the issue of the final detachment of the People’s Liberation Army from the United Communist Party of Nepal Maoist (UCPN/M) and the drafting of the new constitution, the major political parties continue to struggle over the issue of power-sharing in the government. The present government is led by Jhalanath Khanal of the Communist Party Nepal-United Marxist-Leninist (UML) supported by the UCPN/M and the Madheshi Janadhikar Forum (MJF), one of the important Madhesi party factions. However, there are deep rifts w/in each of the major parties while the three largest Madhesi parties have all split over the last year into separate factions.
It is likely as a price of extending the CA past the current May 28th deadline (as set and revised in the Interim Constitution 2007), the Congress Party, the second largest in the CA after the UCPN/M and before the UML, will insist upon a consensus government, including them, under a new prime minister. This political negotiation and calculation has taken up much of the various party leaders’ time over the past few months, leaving less time for resolving the remaining issues to draft a constitution by May 28th.
The situation will remain rather tenuous and uncertain until final negotiations and agreements are made right before the deadline of midnight on May 28th.
In addition to the various political struggles within and between these three major political parties, there are deep and unresolved issues among the major ethnic, linguistic and geographic communities in Nepal.
As all three of the major parties are lead and controlled by Brahmin-Chhetri men (15% of Nepal), there has been a growing movement of indigenous people (‘adivasi-janjati’), Madhesi (people from the terai or lowlands along the Indian border) and Dalits (the formerly untouchable castes) to ensure that the new constitution ensures the progressive restructuring of the state, including new provinces based on ethnic and linguistic boundaries, as well as much expanded reservations or proportionate representation for the historically marginalized.
Each of these communities are represented in the major parties, but they are rarely on the Central Committee or Politburos where real power lies. For that reason, the Madhesis, after a major political movement in early 2007 when they protested the lack of federalism in the Interim Constitution, formed new political parties to represent their interests. Neither the indigenous peoples (IP) nor the Dalits have successfully initiated such parties to-date, although they have a few very minor parties in the CA who vociferously advocate for their rights, in addition to the work done by the IP, Madhesi, Women’s and Dalit CA Caucuses.
Among these various political actors and parties, the UCPN/M, naturally, is considered either the most radical or progressive, depending on your political perspective. The UML is often seen as a more opportunist party willing to swing either right or left to align with the other two major parties for their own party or personal interests. The Congress, once the progressive, anti-feudal party of the 1960-80s, is now seen as more conservative in the political spectrum, the status quo ante party.
The three major Madhesi parties (MJF, Terai Loktantric and Sadbhavana) have all split into two separate factions each, contesting for influence and power among the major three parties. There are altogether 27 (or 28…) parties in the CA, including many with less than five representatives.
Along with state restructuring, proportional representation, some of the other major issues facing the country while drafting the new constitution include: the form of government (directly elected president, prime minister in a parliamentary system or a mixed system) and the type of electoral systems (first past the post, proportional or mixed system) and an independent judiciary.
As there have not been local elections since 1997, and the previous local governments were dissolved by a Congress government in 2002, all local government is being managed by government officials. This, too, is a serious, lingering issue as without locally elected leadership the structure of good governance and democratic government is deeply flawed. Yet the current political parties mostly say that there can only be local elections after the issues identified above are resolved and there are national, then provincial elections some three to five years in the future.
As they say, it's complicated...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)