June 2008 Nepal: The Constituent Assembly Election and Challenges Ahead Dev Raj Dahal, FES Kathmandu • The Constituent Assembly(CA) election in Nepal has established the primacy of ballots over bullets and unveiled the mandate for peaceful change. The first sitting of the CA declared Nepal a federal democratic republic. It has been mandated with the tasks of drafting a new constitution to ensure democracy based on popular sovereignty, making the state inclusive and ushering in durable peace. • The advent of CPN(Maoist) that came out the biggest political party from the elections has provided it an opportunity to transform its wartime ideology, structures and goals into a mass-based competi­tive party. It has also given an opportunity to old parties- NC, CPN-UML, RPP, RJP, etc- to foster the democratization of party structures and leadership. The emergence of new political parties- CPN (Maoist), MJAF, TMLP and SP- has provided mobility to new social groups in politics. It has substan­tially increased the representation of various social groups- women, youth, Dalits and ethnic groups in the 601-member CA. • The CA election produced a fractured mandate to the political parties ushering in the need for con­tinuing the coalition politics that has been going on in Nepal for some time. Introduction On April 10, 2008, Nepal went through a silent transformation, witnessing a triumph of democ­ratic impulse rooted in the primacy of ballots over bullets. The Constituent Assembly(CA) election held that day favored the Communist Party of Ne­pal-Maoist(CPN-Maoist) by allocating it 220 out of the 575 seats in the fray. Its emergence as the single largest party has provided it an incentive to transform itself from a class-based revolutionary organization into a mass-oriented governing party. Over 60 percent of 17,609,408 adults casted their votes to elect the assembly. Out of the total, 240 members were elected through the first-past-the­post system, 335 through proportional representa­tion(PR) and 26 members were to be nominated by the government. Among the 74 political parties that had registered themselves with the Election Commission(EC), only 54 actually contested. Nine of the parties secured seats through both systems of election while 25 parties could have access only to those seats that were allocated for the propor­tional system. Parties receiving more than 23,512 votes in the proportional system garnered at least one seat in the CA. The evolution of the fractured popular mandate, with none of the parties com­manding an absolute majority, has provided con­siderable space for many small parties to play in­fluential roles in the constitution-making process, a participatory exercise. The CPN(Maoist) outmaneuvered the two tradi­tionally ruling parties, the Nepali Congress(NC) which scored 110 seats and the Communist Party of Nepal Unified Marxist-Leninist(CPN-UML) with 103 seats. Out of the 116 seats allocated for the Tarai plains, the southern flatland, the CPN(Mao­ist) captured 42 seats thus posing a competitive challenge to regional parties. The regional parties are an offshoot of the Madhesi movement that based itself on identity politics that ranged from the pursuit of rights and identity to outright seces­sion. By the time the elections were held, the leaders of the Madhesi movement showed that they were capable of joining the mainstream if only to guarantee autonomy for their region in the new constitution. The Madhesi Jana Adhikar Fo­rum(MJAF) scored 52 seats, Tarai Madhesh Lok­tantrik Party(TMLP) 20 seats and Sadbhavana Party(SP) 9 seats only(See http://www.election.gov.np/EN/). Other smaller parties got less than 9 seats each . The existence of