By Purushottam Poudel in The Kathmandu Post 21 Oct 2022Climate change is getting little attention of Nepali politicians, busy as they are with the upcoming parliamentary elections, despite the calamity it’s wreaking on the country’s fragile ecosystem. Experts say the government’s apathy towards climate change is glaring, especially given the increasing incidents each year of melting glaciers, flash floods and landslides. The incidents have claimed lives and destroyed property. The numbers continue to see an…
Posts published in “Nepal”
By Binod Ghimire in The Kathmandu Post,21 Oct 2022It is never easy to predict the election results in Kathmandu— Kathmanduites are well-known for their swing voting. The results of elections in the Panchayat era and after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990 suggest that a candidate’s stature in his/her party or even in government doesn’t matter to the voters from the country’s federal capital. They have defeated a sitting prime minister and chiefs of major…
By Tika R Pradhan in The Kathmandu Post, 21 Oct 2022Five key leaders of Rastriya Prajatantra Party Nepal (RPP-N) earlier this week promised CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a key leader of the ruling coalition their support, bringing out in the open their differences with party chairman Kamal Thapa just ahead of the parliamentary elections due next month. The five leaders are said to be frustrated with Thapa’s move of reaching an agreement…
By Arjun Poudel in The Kathmandu Post,20 Oct 2022Nine-year-old Pramila Chepang from Benighat-Rorang Rural Municipality weighs just 13 kilograms, which indicates that the girl has been suffering from a severe form of malnutrition. According to the World Health Organisation, a 9 year-old girl should weigh at least 28.12 kg. Her weight shows the girl is not getting a sufficient diet or has other serious health issues, doctors say. “We immediately referred the girl to the…
by Prithvi Man Shrestha in The Kathmandu Post, Oct 20, 2022More than two dozen contractors are running for House of Representatives and provincial assembly seats amid concerns that, if elected, they could use their influence to skew laws and policies in their favour. Since the country adopted a system of proportional representation (PR), richer segments of society have allegedly tried to buy their way into the legislature. More and more businessmen and contractors have been…
Report in The Kathmandu Post,19 Oct 2022Top leaders of the ruling coalition have appealed to the public to vote for their candidates in the next month’s federal and provincial elections. They have promised to protect the constitution and bring stability and prosperity to the country. Issuing a joint appeal on Tuesday, the leaders—Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, Maoist Centre Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal, and CPN (Unified Socialist) chief Madhav Kumar Nepal—have…
By Purushottam Poudel in The Kathmandu Post, 13 Oct 2022Despite their polar opposite stances on the bill to amend the Citizenship Act-2006, the CPN-UML and the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP) have forged an alliance for the federal and provincial elections. When President Bidya Devi Bhandari last month snubbed her constitutional duty by refusing to authenticate the amendment bill that had been endorsed by both houses of Parliament, the JSP was a partner of the five-party…
Report in The Kathmandu Post, 13 Oct 2022In the third week of June, the social media was abuzz with optimistic comments when environmentalist Arnico Panday announced that he was all set to contest for a lower house seat as an independent candidate from Lalitpur-3. At the time, Panday had aggressively launched a publicity campaign, even updating his public profile on Linkedin, a professional networking site, identifying himself as a candidate for federal parliament. Many had…
Report in The Kathmanndu Post,13 Oct 2022Chakra Snehi, a CPN-UML leader from Dadeldhura, withdrew his candidacy for the upcoming elections on Wednesday. His party has instead decided to support Karna Malla, the chairperson of Nepali Congress (BP) who is challenging Prime Minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba. The UML and Malla’s party had partnered in the recent local elections. However, the Congress had managed to retain its hold in the district, Deuba’s native.…
By Tika R Pradhan in The Kathmandu Post,2022Nepal’s major parties that advocated proportional representation in state mechanisms and played vital roles in including the provision in the current constitution have miserably failed to live up to their promises by fielding a miniscule number of candidates representing women, Dalits and other marginalised groups under the direct election system.Janajati leaders have also criticised the parties for not ensuring their fair representation in candidacies under the first-past-the-post (FPTP)…
By Purushottam Poudel in The Kathmandu Post ,12 Oct 2022Two Madhesh-based parties led by Upendra Yadav and Mahantha Thakur fought the federal and provincial elections under an alliance in 2017 and won a considerable number of seats together. In Madhesh Province, the two parties even formed their own government. The two parties eventually became one, ending the series of splits that plagued the regional forces for long. Their unity, however, did not sustain. For one…