Friday 19th April 2024
A key breakthrough in the Nepal general election 2017 has ended with the announcement of the results of the recently-concluded parliamentary and provincial polls, under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system, on December 13, 2017.
The FPTP election vote count for 165 House of Representatives (HoR) and 330 Provincial Assembly (PA) seats declared the victory of the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN)-Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) in the recent polls.
With 80 HoR seats & 167 PA seats by UML and 36 HoR & 74 PA seats by its poll partner CPN (Maoist Centre), the left alliance finally emerged as the single largest party as per the FPTP results.
With this, the ruling Nepali Congress (NC) could find its presence only in 23 HoR and 41 PA constituencies, followed by Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJP-Nepal) that received 11 HoR and 16 PA seats.
While the independents proved their presence in 1 HoR constituency and 3 PA constituencies, 6 women candidates made it to HoR.
According to EC, the vote counting of both HoR and National Assembly has come to final stages with 164 parliamentary and 329 provincial representatives elected so far in the polls held for 165 parliamentary and 330 provincial seats.
Overall, the left alliance won 116 of 165 FPTP seats for HoR and was leading the Proportional Representation (PR) count, held for 60 districts, for 110 seats.
Out of the 7,684,328 PR votes counted so far, “CPN-UML has so far secured 2,631,991 votes followed by NC (2,546,069), CPN-MC (1,045,446), Federal Socialist Forum Nepal (351,525) and the RJP-Nepal (295,448),” informed Nepal Election Commission (EC) Spokesperson Nawaraj Dhakal.
The PR vote counting is currently underway in around 17 districts and the final PR result is expected by December 15, 2017 evening.
Once the parties submit their HoR winners under PR category, EC will take the process ahead to President for further approval before making the list public.
The number of directly-elected women to the HoR seats under the FPTP category has decreased this time as only 6 women candidates made it to HoR.
This number indicates a gradual decline in women representatives in Nepali elections over a period.
While the first Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in 2008 saw 30 women representatives, the number declined to 10 in 2013 CA elections, and now it has come down to 6.
This situation lies in contrast to the constitutional rules that recommend 33 percent women representatives in the House.
This time, only three parties including CPN-UML, CPN-MC and Rastriya Janamorcha the winning female candidates.
While UML had only 3 female winners in a total of 80 FPTP seats, CPN-MC also saw a similar number among its 36 total FPTP winners.
Meanwhile, the ruling NC party saw the failure of its 9 female candidates fielded for HoR seats.
With the results announced, now the winner leftist alliance is brainstorming on the formation of the new Nepali government with key discussions on power-sharing, among others.
According to the senior left leaders, KP Oli, UML Chairman and the next PM of Nepal (likely), and the MC Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also called Prachanda, are likely to hold discussions during December 14-15, 2017 over the formation of new government at the Center.
While some experts feel the formation of central government will be possible only after Assembly results, UML feels that the Assembly (Upper House) election will not be an issue and aims at the formation by the end of December 2017.
Following the formation, the President will call for the first Federal Parliament session under the new government, within 30 days of the declaration of final results of HoR as recommended by the Nepali Constitution.
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