EDITORIAL

Reports state that Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife Dr Arzu Deuba were found distributing money – five thousand rupees each – to the voters in his electoral constituency in Dadeldhura during the silent period of the election. The former prime minister and chair of the Unified Socialist Party, Madhav Nepal has claimed that his opponents were distributing money to influence the vote. In Gorkha, during the silent period, Maoist supremo Pushpakamal Dahal’s campaigners were also distributing money to the voters. On the whole, all the candidates from the ruling alliance and opposition party UML are found involved in spending money for influencing votes. More importantly, those parties in the government have abused the election code of conduct to ensure their victory. Candidates were ready to do everything for ensuring their victory. In Chitwan, the home constituency of Maoist supremo Prachanda, in the name of his ailing wife Sita who is hospitalized in Kathmandu, is found casting vote in Chitwan. It is said that Prachanda’s daughter Ganga had cast the vote in the name of her mother Sita. These are just examples of to what extent the political parties have attempted to manipulate elections by abusing power. The only aim of the political parties in government is to ensure their victory. In a democracy, the political agendas, election manifestos and political ideologies are evaluated by the voters and based on the voters' beliefs, they vote for their candidates and the political parties. In the Nepali democracy, which has been coined as “loktantra”, in fact, it has been transformed into “loot-tantra”. The only intention of the political parties and their leaders is to secure victory at any cost and to loot the nation for five years. However, the voters are aware of these facts as always they have been deceived by the political leaders. Therefore, this time, they have sent a strong message to the political parties and their leaders that they are not ready for being deceived again and again. Losing popularity by those octogenarian leaders who have wished to remain in politics until they take their last breath, the defeat of some prominent candidates and securing victory by those prominent leaders with very difficult efforts could be a strong message for those so-called established frauds. Except for some exceptions, the ruling alliance could not get votes as they had assumed. They thought that voters are sheep and follow them always, however, in the 20 November elections, new faces and new political parties appeared, which alarmed those brokers, middlemen, and foreign agents occupying the political leadership. On the one hand, those corrupt political leaders were spending money to influence the vote, on the other, with the slogan for a change and end of corruption, new faces have been able to challenge those old and ugly faces in politics giving the message that money is not everything every time.