Perception of People on Constituent Assembly

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Perception of People on Constituent Assembly

• Yubaraj Sangroula

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Public Awareness and Responsibility of Political
Actors

• Constituent Assembly is major political agenda,
  for political parties.
• Policy Issues and Programs come to people mostly
  through Government System and Political
  Parties.
• A Policy when adopted or passed by Legislative
  body becomes law and enforcement of it becomes
  obligation of the Government System.
• Policy advocacy by political parties is a'
  process of critical appraisal of necessary
  information to people.
• The Findings of the Survey very Clearly Present
  that System of Government and Political Parties
  have Failed to Responsibility of Properly
  Educating People of the Mission of Constituent
  Assembly.

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Indications or Implications

• Constituent Assembly, for its proper
  understanding at peoples level, generated high
  expectations within a smaller circle of
  advocates of rights, but ignorance of larger
  population of it has made it volatile of
  generating conflict.
• Political parties could address this problem by
  building a trust among people towards
  inclusion. However, political parties failed to
  build trust among the people that those who had
  excluded would be included. The need people felt
  in this context was to build programs and
  institutions for political movement rather than
  engage in constructive dialogue on contents,
  process and modalities of Constituent Assembly.
  This might have been crucial for less proportion
  of people with concrete ideas about the
  constituent assembly.
• Political parties themselves failed to
  understand difference between the Constituent
  Assembly and Ordinary Parliament. They failed to
  look into Constituent Assembly Issues from its
  modality and contents perspectives. They were
  simply confined to look it from Election
  Perspective. So they thought that it was
  useless to go to people for campaign on
  constituent assembly before declaration of the
  date of Constituent Assembly.

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• Keep larger number of people Unaware of the
  Constituent Assembly is dangerous in many ways
• The increasing group interests of people may
  pose a danger of transforming into competition.
  The population in favor of democracy may divide
  and become weaker.
• Building workable democratic structure of the
  State would be less priority for people, and
  group interests will gain priority. The
  prospective Constitution cannot provide itself
  as the best platform for resolving issues of
  groups in absence of a clearly defined
  democratic structure of the State.
• People for being not properly aware will become
  vote banks from party ideology. In fact, in
  Constituent Assembly Elections, people must not
  be Party Vote Banks and Partisan, rather they
  should be critical to see issues and make their
  opinions.
• Findings of the Survey that Political Parties
  played negligible role in Educating People of
  Constituent Assembly implies that Political
  Parties are still not prepared to see critical
  people, who can take decisions only after they
  come to convinced opinions.

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• Big gape between men and women is vulnerable to
  continuity of gender-based exclusion.
• Interest of women may not be as high in
  constituent assembly as it must be.
• Womens opinions might be influenced by men, as
  they might not be able to generate their group
  interest and solidarity.
• Less women will be prepared to contest the
  election, as they are less aware about the core
  issues they have to fight the election for. The
  participation of women in the Constitution
  making will be not active and meaningful.
• The Survey Findings that Only 25 people have
  correctly understood the Constituent Assembly, is
  dangerous. Because many people in it will
  participate with pride and prejudice. The result
  will be badly affected. Nepalese people will have
  an imposed constitution.

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People have not heard about Constituent Assembly
from Political Parties.

• This shows that political parties are totally
  cut-off from people in relation to Constituent
  Assembly.
• If we take Constituent Assembly as an instrument
  or platform of conflict transformation, the
  political parties failure to link up with people
  implies that they have not understood the
  Constituent Assembly in that context. It means
  that Constituent Assembly would largely be a
  place for political ideological contest, rather
  than a platform to forge consensus
• This Statement has been confirmed by the
  Survey, and thus it demands the States machinery
  and Political Parties initiate programs to
  educate people on CA Immediately. As in many
  countries that used CA, Nepal must establish a
  Constituent Assembly Commission to coordinate
  all necessary efforts.

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• 3. While CPN (Maoist) claims CA as an agenda
  propagated by it, but the findings shows
  otherwise. Very small population know CPN
  (Maoist) with regard to CA. This is definitely
  not positive indication. It shows that CA was not
  its preferred or priority agenda in the past.
• The Survey also presents the similar situation
  as CPN Maoist also is not engaged in educating
  people about CA.

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• 4. People are not optimistic that CA election
  will be fair and held on time. They have also
  underlined the importance of election observation
  for free and fair election. They also prefer
  Nepali Organizations to monitor it.
• This shows that people dont have faith on law
  and order situation and they still feel
  unsecured. This and their less optimism towards
  timely poll also indicates their less interest
  and possibly low turn-out in the election.

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Some Major Implications

• Democratic parties- parties with ideology of
  multi-party parliamentary democracy have
  maintained double standards. CA without
  education of people is an indication of this
  double standard.
• Political leaders are not serious on making
  Constituent Assembly a platform to transform
  conflict and consolidate Nepal as a nation
  state. The present crisis in many parts of
  country are indication of this political parties
  lacking of seriousness

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• Political Parties have not yet developed a psyche
  of peoples sovereignty. They think they can
  decide policies so education is not important.
  They do not like informed and critical people.
• Only 25 people capable of understanding CA is a
  very negative indicator of CA result. The
  prospect of polling not on policy based agenda
  but on pride and prejudice is immense.

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• Less optimism of people towards fair and timely
  election may possibly result on low turn-out in
  the election. If it happens so, it may again
  raise the question of ownership of the
  constitution, thus giving the conflict a
  continuity.