Poll observers should be graduates: EC proposal
KATHMANDU, JUL 18 -
If a new proposal is anything to go by, election observers should be bachelor’s degree holders if they want to monitor the upcoming Constituent Assembly poll s.
An International Observers Accreditation Procedure and Code of Conduct prepared by a committee under EC Commissioner PV Rambhakta Thakur has come up with this proposal. Besides the minimum qualification of a bachelor’s degree, sound experiences in election monitoring are a must, it says.
“The observers should be politically neutral and have a bachelor’s degree to monitor the elections,” said Chief Election Commissioner Neel Kantha Uprety. The EC had proposed a similar provision in the 2008 CA elections, but it got the axe later following criticism from election observers.
In case of local elections, the EC committee, however, has proposed that Intermediate degree holders can observe the poll s.
Such a proposal was made public by the EC during an interaction held with national and international election observers in Kathmandu on Wednesday. The observers, at the function, urged the EC to remove this provision, claiming that it will be impractical in Nepal’s context.
“Election observation will not be effective just by holding a bachelor’s degree. It is the experience that matters most,” said Prof Kapil Shrestha, co-chair of National Election Observation Committee. Some domestic election observers argued that SLC graduates should be allowed to monitor the elections.
The proposal that is yet to be endorsed by the EC Board also has it that reports of election observation should be submitted to the election body within 30 days of the poll s. Observers should disassociate themselves from political parties before starting election monitoring and they will not be allowed to monitor the poll s in their respective constituencies, it says. They are not supposed to make any comment on the quality of electoral processes before votes are counted. The election body has also proposed that observers need to cover at least 100 constituencies representing five development regions from Mountain, Hill and Tarai regions if they want to a part of election monitoring.
In the 2008 CA elections, 148 national and 30 international observers had monitored the poll s.
Of them, only 23 and five international institutions had submitted report to the EC.
Following the declaration of the second CA elections for November 19, Asian Network of Free Election, European Union, Carter Centre, and Embassy of Japan have expressed their desire to monitor the upcoming poll s.
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