Karnali: No woman representation under FPTP

A single Dalit candidate has been elected under the first-past-the-post system in the Karnali Province Assembly.

Rana Singh Pariyar of the CPN (Maoist Centre) is the single Dalit winning the recently held PA elections from Humla (1) to represent his community in the PA.

He defeated independent candidate Mangal Bahadur Shahi by a margin of 1,851. He secured 6,481 votes against 4,630 by Shahi. Aside from his being elected under the direct system, other political parties here did not feel it necessary to give the tickets to Dalits in the elections.

Major political parties, the Nepali Congress (NC), CPN (UML), and the CPN (Maoist Centre), did not field women candidates in the PA election. Nepal Workers and Peasants Party (NWPP) fielded three female candidates: Manakali Ramjali from the Surkhet 1(2), Bijukala Rana from the Surkhet 2(1) and Laxmi Kumari Singh from the Dailekh 1(2). They finished with 63 votes, 306 and 202 respectively, and lost the elections.

According to the rights activist, Pabitra Shahi, parties that had chances to win the election denied women’s candidacy. “Based on gender issue, to prevent women from competing under the direct elections, and discourage their participation and leadership in the politics under any circumstances is against the Constitution,” Shahi said, asserting the need for raising this issue strongly in the days ahead.

The assessment of Maoist Centre’s Karnali Province Chair Bimala KC is that women are equally capable of winning the FPTP elections. “We see the nationwide scenario, women had got the tickets under the direct election, but it was not encouraging and not in line with the Constitutional provisions. In case of the Karnali PA, political parties did a great injustice to the half of the population by denying women’s rights to be voted.”

According to the Election Commission’s data, in the Province, the UML has so far got 183,950 votes under the proportional representation (PR) followed by 170,765 by the Nepali Congress, 137,629 by the CPN (Maoist Centre), 35,826 by the CPN (Unified Socialist), 25,186 by the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, 8,993 by the NWPP and 3,019 by the CPN (ML).

Other political parties have obtained less than 2,000 votes. In Karnali, political parties have so far achieved 576,000 votes in total. Under the direct seats, all are occupied by my males.