Politicos: re-positioning for polls

By TNW correspondent

Nepali politicos are today busy working out transactional strategy for gaining most from the forthcoming provincial and federal general elections. The local level election poll alliance, they think, would not yield them most. That is why they would like to review poll partnership, said a senior politician. 

All – aspirants for Premiership, more seats for individual parties in the parliament and provincial assemblies – are engaged in talks inside their parties and across political parties. What shape transactional politics will take cannot be predicted.

A number of possibilities could emerge: revival of previous left alliance, emergence of a left alliance without CPN UML continuing current ruling alliance, NC – CPN UML understanding, NC partnering with non-left parties and small parties partnering with independent candidates.

Whatever the combinations in poll partnership, the politicos, senior leaders and parties are not working out unity on ideological or policy-centric basis or national public issues having meaning for the people and the country’s future, said a media analyst. “The guiding principle of leaders and parties today is: the partnership that serves their self-interest.”

All parties are convinced that they alone would not be able to do most in polls for they have lost public trust because of the various types of political squabbles they got engaged in the past four or five years.

Partnership in polls could also be shaped as per the political situation of a given province of parliamentary constituency. “There would be no national structure of poll partnership; it would be categorized as per the requirement of a given constituency, said a former member of parliament.

“After all nobody could predict the shape and structure of what politicos call transactional politics or bargain-based politics.”

According to one source the partnership in poll will be determined immediately after the date for the general election is formally announced. If it is delayed, the same could impact adversely on the party concerned.