A senior member of the royal cabinet has said the government will hold municipal and parliamentary elections even if the seven agitating political parties boycott them.
Speaking at an interaction organised by the Reporters Club Nepal in the capital Saturday, Minister for Education and Sports, Radha Krishan Mainali, said, “Elections will be conducted within the scheduled time even should the seven parties fail to participate.”
He warned that the government would be compelled to conduct ‘party-less elections’ because of non-cooperation from the seven parties. “If the elections are held in a party-less style, it will be solely because of the seven parties’ boycott.”
Minister Mainali insisted that as there were no measures to decide the legitimacy of elections, even 5 percent voter turnout would be sufficient to legitimise the upcoming elections.
Saying that the announcement of parliamentary polls by the King has made the situation ‘easier’, he urged parties to participate in the polls if they were to re-establish the representative system in real sense.
The minister’s comments come after the announcement of the seven-party alliance, which has been waging a pro-democracy movement against what it calls royal autocracy, to boycott the municipal polls due this Nepali year and the parliamentary polls in 2007.
King Gyanendra in his message to the nation on the occasion of Vijaya Dashami on Sunday ordered the Election Commission to conduct free and fair election of the House of Representatives by mid-April 2007.