editThe haste to usher in a ‘new Nepal’ through implementation of an exclusive constitution by the conduct of its first elections can merely reflect the flaws. The fact is that the constitutional issues remaining did trigger the electoral division of the country in its very first stage. Our monopolists can merely cement this decision in the second stage when and if conducted. The new local levels have merely succeeded in highlighting public dearth of knowledge of political locations where elections took place. More fundamentally critics of belated vote counts, high numbers of rejected votes and confusions remaining on complicated electoral papers signify inadequate homework on voter realities as much as they do signal the haste with which the elections were conducted. Prime purpose of the elections in this electoral democracy was to implement the constitution and the claims of high voter turnout must justify the participation hyped by a pliant media who served well to inform the populace that the elections to the local levels were suddenly found amiss for the past two decades and that the new local levels empowered the people to extents never envisaged before. By time this comes to print the newly enthused public and their candidates will have come to realize that the legal fundaments of a ‘Singh Durbar’ in their very own neighborhoods and door steps have yet to be created much less legislated for the newly elected to begin functioning. The charade must nevertheless continue for the momentum of the elections to deliver the second phase. This would mean that the UML mellow its gadfly image by adjusting its opposition to the constitutional amendment very much to do with the polls already begun in order to take advantage of its electoral advantage the first round. The scene thus must shift to the legislature where electoral legislation was conveniently shelved on a manufactured ruse of a rift between constitutional organs. When parliament opens today, the agenda would seem onerous indeed but the haste for the polls will continue to dictate the viable more than the necessary. To boot, prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal has thrown in another spanner in the form of a possible resignation. The irony is that constitutional discussions regarding the very polls the first phase of which has just been concluded may remain unheeded yet in the haste to conduct the second phase. The idea is to implement the constitution regardless of deficiencies and faults. In so doing we will find the relevant issues that closed house for the elections such as the tiff with the judiciary and the postponement of the budget plus the vote on amendments papered over or sidelined by the ushering in of a new government and the introduction of a budget (with no new fiscal policy that is) leading the public to yet another fast tracked polls in the rest of the country. This leaves the onus squarely on the newly national Tarai parties long nudged by lures of participation. We are back where we stood. The second phase will be worth waiting for indeed.