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Nepal Women and Dalit Ride into Parliament on Maoist Coattails

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AdvocacyNet
News Bulletin 135
April 24, 2008
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Kathmandu, April 24, 2008: Around 250 women and lower-caste Dalit have been elected to Nepal's new 601-member Constituent Assembly, reversing centuries of exclusion and raising hopes for a major political push to eradicate discrimination from Nepali society.

With almost all of the results of the April 10 election now confirmed, it is clear that the Maoists won a sweeping victory, just two years after abandoning a violent civil war. Women in particular were able to benefit from the Maoists' triumph. About a third of the 200 women deputies who will sit in the new Assembly are Maoists.

An estimated 51 Dalit deputies have been elected to the Assembly, and will occupy just over seven percent of the total seats. This is well below the national percentage - Dalit account for up to 20 percent of the population - but will still ensure strong support for outlawing caste in the new constitution.

"This is very surprising. The electors punished the high class," said Pramod Dhakal, Executive Director of the Canada Forum for Nepal, a Nepali diaspora group in Canada. "The parliament will be very representative of the population - more representative than in many other countries."

 Mr Dhakal also predicted that the result will give Nepal a good chance of peace over the next two years. If true, this would vindicate a complex electoral formula that required Nepalis to cast two ballots - one, a direct vote based on constituencies ("first past the post") and the second, a vote for a party (proportional representation, or PR).

 The Maoists won 120 of the 240 constituency seats but were denied an overall majority in the Assembly because they appear to have only secured 105 of the 335 seats chosen by PR. This will give the Maoists enough seats to form a government but not enough to impose a radical agenda. Many hope it will also provide them with a strong incentive not to return to violence.

The other unexpected winner was the Madhesi minority in southeast Nepal, which has threatened independence and even launched violent attacks since the restoration of democracy in 2006. Madhesi parties appear to have won around 70 seats, which many hope will be sufficient to co-opt the Madhesis into the political process.

Advocates for human rights see the election of so many women as proof of a historic change of attitude. "Women candidates contested with top male leaders of big parties and won fairly with large amounts of votes," writes Sharmila Karki, President of Jagaran Nepal, an advocacy group that fielded 500 women election monitors.

Mr Dhakal said that many Dalit candidates received large numbers of votes even when they did not win, suggesting that voters did not oppose them on the basis of caste. This, he said, was indicative of profound social change.

The Maoists took women and Dalit more seriously than the other parties, showing that they understood the country's desire for change. Of the 29 women deputies elected in direct competition, 23 were put forward by the Maoists. All seven Dalit elected in the direct vote were Maoist candidates.

The Congress party only fielded two women candidates and did not propose a single Dalit, which may help to explain why the party was decisively rejected by voters in spite of having steered the transition to democracy. The party was also hurt by fielding a bloc of monarchist candidates who supported the widely-disliked King Gyanendra.

The Advocacy Project is recruiting five Peace Fellows to work with civil society in Nepal this summer. Two Fellows will work for the Jagaran Media Center, which advocates for Dalit rights.

Meanwhile, a detailed new report from the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University has set out recommendations for protecting Dalit rights in the new constitution.

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