According to our media, there are around 3,400+ candidates standing up for our whatever you call it federal or general election this time around. We have 165 seats for grabs and then the parties get some of the pie from the 110 PR seats. For the 165, you got to come first to take your seat in the House after the results are out.
For the PR seats, it is much easier as you don't have to go around ghar-dailo getting garlanded by 50 kg of flowers or listening to insults from frustrated voters. If your party gets 20 PR seats and if you are lucky then you get a seat in the House with the ones who had to gargle their throats with hot water and salt during the election campaign due to excessive shouting when giving speeches to convince voters to vote for them.
Now let's do some math. If you do the average then there are more than 20+ candidates standing up for election this time in each constituency. I think most of our mountain and hilly regions will have less because in places like Manang, you can't be finding 20 folks competing for a few thousand votes. I think the most they have is like 3 or 4 but in major cities and Terai regions, some places have like 30 folks thinking they will win the seat and jumping into the election campaign.
If we once again use the Pareto Principle then, 80% of the candidates will lose their election deposit and some of them stand up for election for no reason other than to have fun. A friend of mine, who used to be a social worker once, during Covid, distributing food and supplies decided to stand up for election in the last edition and he managed to get 25 votes. He was well known in his constituency. Everyone praised him and thanked him for helping others. He thought that since everyone seem to like him, he could win the election, be a MP and most likely do some good for his constituency.
When the results were out, he was not even in the top 5 or top 10, right at the bottom but did beat another guy who only got 19 votes. You don't even want to count the percentage of votes my friend received because it would be too embarrassing. More than 50,000 votes cast and you get 25. I asked him where he went wrong? His answer was that he did not have the funds to campaign but I think people don't want social superheros, they want a little bit mix of Batman and the Joker when it comes to elections!
It is very rare for independent candidates to win the House seats. It happens in municipalities but when it comes to the provincial and federal level, most of the independents who do win are actually old party members who didn't get a ticket from their respective parties and decided to hash it out on his or her own and the voters decided that he or she could do better.
Elections in Nepal are expensive. The Election Commission (EC) has its own rules and regulations but most of it is violated by our candidates. The EC has it mandatory for all candidates to have bank accounts and use banking channels for political donations and expenses for their election campaigns. And so far less than 700 candidates have complied with the rule. That is around 20% of the total candidates who are standing up for election. I think the Pareto Principle is too good to be true for everything.
And even though the EC sets a limit for candidates on how much they can spend, nobody is actually transparent on where there donations came from and how much they spent. Our political parties have time and again failed to submit audited financial reports on time to the EC and still they don't get punished for violating the rules.
Let's do some math on campaign finances. The EC has strict rules on the spending limit but nobody really care about. How much do you think KP Oli is spending in his constituency in Jhapa to save his seat from Balen? I hear that he has mobilized everyone and even the RPP and the Congressis and their donors to ensure that he does not lose face and lose the leadership of his party if he loses the election.
If we were to use sporting analogies, then KP Oli, the heavyweight champion of the world wants to retain his title one last time even though he has nothing to prove to anyone except his ego is up his arse. Balen is the new contender, fresh off the Bagmati, eager to challenge the toughest fighter in town. If he wins, then he will prove the people want change. If he loses then we will understand that patronage politics is here to stay for a while till another Tsunami arrives.
Is Balen a fun candidate, who is doing all this for fun? I don't know but in my personal opinion, this guy had the chance to be a PM after the Gen Z massacre. But he did not jump into the lucky draw and just stayed quiet and worked behind the scenes. If he had become the PM, then he would have accomplished nothing except hold the election and leave.
The committee tasked to investigate what happened in September has yet to publish its report and nobody is surprised because that has been the norm since the 1990s. Every committee formed have failed to publish its reports. Well, the committees do submit the report to the government but all of them failed to publish it for all of us to read and understand. Everyone is out there to save each other from punishment for political reasons.
And taking about fun candidates, I don't know if Rishi Dhamala will win from Rautahat. I find him more of a Jerry Springer of Nepal but he has worked hard to get where he is today from a paper boy to a so-called patrakar. This man works 18 hours a day, he is up at 4am to get ready for his morning radio show and then later in the day for his TV show and then manages to meet politicians and those in power during the night. He is everywhere.
I am hoping Dhamala will win because we need all kinds of people in the House. The serious ones, the fun ones, the wild ones and the crazy ones but we don't want the corrupt ones, the nepo ones, the bad ones this time around.
I think for a change, it would be better if we vote for all new faces and enjoy the show for the next five years or while it lasts. There is no guarantee that the new ones will be less corrupt than the previous ones. There is no guarantee that the new ones will focus more on meritocracy and pragmatism rather than nepotism and patronage. But we can always hope for the better and if we are not happy, there will be elections again. It is not the end of the world.
And for the 80% of the 'fun' candidates who are in the fray just to keep themselves busy for 15 days every 5 years... please stop doing that. Save your deposit, donate it to the political party you like and if you don't like anybody then just donate it to charity but why waste your money, time and your voice box to only get a few votes and increase the expense of the EC by fitting in your symbol in the ballot?
We have survived 35+ years of total loot by our politicians, civil servants and tax evading, land grabbing byaparis. And once again, using the Pareto Principle, it's the 20% of the chor byaparis who give the good honest business folks a bad name. We know who they are and we know the good honest ones too!
We will also survive another 35 if we get the same old clowns but by then 80% of the folks in this country will be abroad and the only ones left will be the politicians, civil servants and their chamchas.
And if no remittance is coming in and not much folks to pay taxes to pay the salaries of those in power... then I have no idea if a country will survive. Let us hope we will not go to that stage. Let us be positive. Let us be kind and hope that all of our politicians who win the election will finally realize that it is never too late to change course and lead the county in the right direction.
image credit: orfonline