Saturday, February 9, 2013
Local elections ahead of national elections
Yesterday (Feb 8, 2013) the American ambassador in Nepal wrote an opinion piece in Kathmandu Post with the title "Nepal deserves elections" about the immediate need for national election. However, in the article published today (Feb 9, 2013) in Republica with the title "First things first", I argue that people in the ground demand local elections more than national elections. The unedited version of my article is below.
Local
elections before national election
By: Mukesh
Khanal
In 2056 BS, the Nepali government came up with a 14-step procedure for
devising local level development plans. Steps 1-8 occur at the village
development committee (VDC) level where local level stakeholders meet and
propose development plans. Steps 9-14 occur at the district development
committee (DDC) level where district level authorities assess the plans
forwarded by VDCs. This 14-step procedure is followed by government bureaucrats
regardless of whether the VDC or DDC have elected officials or not.
My interactions with local citizens, political actors and local
bureaucrats in Dhading, Gorkha and Chitwan this month has shown that in absence
of elected officials, VDC secretaries fulfill the roles of 57 different elected
officials while handling local level duties of 22 different ministries. In
addition, not every VDC has an appointed VDC secretary. So, the reality is that,
a VDC secretary has been burdened with duties of multiple VDCs in the district.
Sometimes, the VDCs are on opposite ends of the district, making the work of
the VDC secretary even more difficult. Given these, to say that many of our VDC
secretaries are overworked and overburdened would be an understatement. In
addition, the VDC secretaries have been blamed for incompetence, corruption and
enjoyment of excessive power. Some blames are justified while others aren’t.
To help these overburdened local level bureaucrats, in 2063 BS, the
national government devised a policy of All Party Mechanism (APM) in the local
levels. As a result, all 3915 VDCs and 58 municipalities got an APM under the
direction of central government. The basic idea of APM was promising. It would
fulfill the void of locally elected officials through mutual cooperation among
political parties at the local level. Political parties at VDC and municipality
levels would send their representatives to APMs, which would listen to people’s
demands and make decisions—budgetary and allocation—of local development.
Nepali citizens at local levels agree, in general, about these roles played by
APMs, except “listening to the people” part.
In absence of locally elected officials—and before the formation of
APMs—VDC secretaries were designated decision makers for local bodies. However,
once APMs came into existence, ensuring accountability at local level became
difficult. APMs deflected accountability issues to VDC secretaries, and vice
versa. One blamed the other for poor decision making regarding local projects
and needs. As a result, local budgets got misused and misappropriated with
nobody being held accountable for poor results. Budget allocated for women and
youth activities were spent on roads and teej
parties. This misuse has resulted due to a lack of clear breakdown of how
and where the allocated budgets can be used.
Local journalists report that even some supposed members of local
development committees are unaware of project and budget decisions made by such
committees. They also claim that a number of VDC secretaries have been found renting
rooms in district headquarters instead of staying in the VDCs that they serve.
This has continued despite government efforts to curb the practice by paying an
extra allowance of Rs 1500 each month to VDC secretaries as an incentive for
staying in their respective workplaces. These abuses, misuses and lack of
responsibility from local political actors and local bureaucrats show that
absence of locally elected officials has hurt local level progress in Nepal.
The most recent local level elections were held in 2054 BS, and tenure
of those elected officials ended in 2058 BS. So, there have been no local level
elected officials in Nepali VDCs and municipalities for over 11 years. Since a
bureaucrat is only interested and obliged to follow rules and regulations
specified by national government, local level bureaucrats may not be very
interested and invested in hearing the voices and identifying critical needs of
local citizenry. Local level bureaucrats are accountable not to the local
citizenry but to higher level officials in respective Ministries. The
government had hoped that formation of APMs would take care of this
bureaucratic hurdle by providing a mechanism at local level that actually
listened to what local citizenry had to say about local development needs and
formulated plans accordingly. However, when it was evident that there was
rampant corruption in the APMs, the government dissolved all APMs in 2068 BS.
It has become evident that we need locally elected officials to listen
to public concerns and needs, and to guide planning and decision making in local
level development processes. However, both local and national level political
actors today do not want local elections. Although APMs have now been
dissolved, local political actors from different parties—large and small—are
still informally engaged in local level development planning and decision
making processes. These local political actors, especially ones from smaller
political parties, stand to lose their share of corruption money that they
currently enjoy through informal APMs if there is an elected official handling
planning and decision making duties.
National level political leaders do not want local elections because
current system of informal APMs allows them to appoint handpicked local
political individuals into these APMs. This ensures that these individuals in
APMs are accountable and obedient to national level political leaders and not
to local citizenry. This system has allowed national level political leaders to
have a firm grip in local development process, the kind of grip that they have
never enjoyed before in their lifetime. If local elections are held, local
citizens could elect somebody unapproachable or a rogue politician not in
cahoots with national level leaders. That would disrupt the power stranglehold
that today’s national level political leaders enjoy at local levels. This fear has
made national level politicians not want local elections.
Locals blame that local bureaucrats do not hear the cause of locals and
do not worry much about local issues because most bureaucrats are not local
residents themselves. Add to that the nature of their tenure at a particular
locality—which varies from six months to a year—and locals feel that government
bureaucrats are not invested and interested in resolving local issues. However,
if there were locally elected officials present as decision makers, local
development process and planning would improve significantly because of
increasing accountability that locally elected officials are subjected to due
to the nature of their appointment through popular elections.
My interaction with locals in Dhading, Gorkha and Chitwan this month
suggests that Nepalis care more about local elections than national elections.
They believe that their access and reach to national level government and
policymakers have been lacking due to absence of locally elected officials.
They also believe that the level of corruption that has occurred in absence of
locally elected officials—and in APMs under the aegis of national level
political leaders—will reduce significantly if local citizens regain their
right to elect local officials.
Labels: election, nepal, peter bodde
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