Revising electoral system

A change in the country’s electoral system cannot be decided in closed-door meetings of political parties.

A range of views have emerged during the ongoing Central Working Committee (CWC) meeting of the Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament. There are differences over the working style of current leadership under party president Sher Bahadur Deuba, over whether the country’s constitutional status should be changed from ‘secular’ to ‘a country with religious freedom’, and on whether senior party leader Bal Krishna Khand, who is in judicial custody, should be suspended from all party duties. But starting with Deuba, most CWC members appeared to be in agreement on one issue: revision of the country’s electoral system. Many speakers in the meeting were in favour of filling all seats of the federal lower house through direct election. Instead of electing a portion of the lower house under the Proportional Representation system, some suggested, the upper house of the federal parliament could be filled exclusively through the PR system. They said that until the lower house was directly elected, Nepal would not have a stable government and nor would the Congress ever again get an absolute majority.