Ramlal Dagaura of Nagarik Unmukti Party elected mayor of Tikapur Municipality
Ramlal Dagaura of Nagarik Unmukti Party has been elected as the mayor of Tikapur Municipality, Kailali.
According to Election Officer Pushkar Khadka, Tharu garnered 9, 642 votes while his competitor Nawaraj Rawal of Nepali Congress received 6, 642 votes.
He said that Khadak Bahadur Shah of CPN (Maoist Centre) has been elected as the deputy mayor.
He secured 7, 955 votes and his contender Ulkadevi BK obtained 7, 802 votes.
Election Officer Khadka said that 31, 523 people cast their votes in Tikapur Municipality.
US special envoy on Tibetan issues reaches Dharamshala
US special coordinator for Tibetan affairs Uzra Zeya arrived in Dharamshala on Wednesday on a high-level visitation that signifies Washington’s significant support for the Tibetan issue.
She received a warm welcome from Tibetans, for a first such visit of a higher official from the Biden administration.
Zeya will be here for two days and meet activists and leaders of the exile community here. She will also meet the Dalai Lama on Thursday morning.
This key visit comes shortly after President of Central Tibetan administration Penpa Tsering’s visit to Washington last month. During his visit, Tsering met with the US Special envoy along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
On Tuesday, Zeya held an “engaging” discussion with Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra on regional issues of mutual interest.
“Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra had an engaging discussion with US Under Secretary of State Uzra Zeya @UnderSecStateJ on regional issues of mutual interest,” the Ministry of External Affairs (EAM) spokesperson Arindam Bagchi tweeted.
Zeya is on a visit to India and Nepal, from May 17-22. She was appointed as the special coordinator for Tibetan Issues in December last year.
The International Campaign for Tibet welcomed her appointment and expressed hope that she will work proactively at promoting dialogue between the Dalai Lama’s envoys and the Chinese leadership.
Source: ANI
Kathmandu update: Balen leading Shah leading by 10, 113 votes
Independent mayoral candidate Balen Shah has stretched his lead by 10, 113 votes in Kathmandu Metropolitan City.
According to the latest update, he garnered 21, 111 votes.
CPN-UML candidate Keshav Sthapit, who is in the second place, secured 10, 998 votes.
Srijana Singh of Nepali Congress received 10, 173 votes.
Editorial: Ditch the paper
The tortoise-paced vote-counting following the May 13 local elections is a farce. With better preparation, the Election Commission could easily have arranged for more counting stations and personnel to tally votes in big cities like Kathmandu and Bharatpur. Surely the commission officials understand that prompt results are among the salient features of free and fair elections. The longer the results take, the greater the suspicions of foul play. And why keep counting votes for up to a month when you could literally do it in minutes?
To its credit, the Election Commission has repeatedly tried to phase-in electronic voting. During the 2008 Constituent Assembly election, the commission had piloted electronic voting in some booths of Kathmandu constituency number 1. Both local and international poll observers had deemed the pilot a success and encouraged wider adoption of electronic voting. Yet Nepal to this day continues to exclusively rely on paper. The major political parties are apparently unconvinced that the machines cannot be tampered with. But experiences from around the world suggest paper voting is more amenable to tampering and fraud—by a magnitude—compared to electronic voting. If India, with its wretched history of electoral violence and rigging, now has no qualms about embracing technology to make its voting system quick and transparent, there is no reason Nepal should not adopt it too.
Twenty or more days to count less than 200,000 votes (in Kathmandu, for instance) is way too much. The voters are being made to continuously check updates to see how their candidate of choice is faring—as if they have nothing better to do. Being so inconvenienced, they might be discouraged from voting next time. Perhaps it is too late to adopt a full-fledged electronic voting for upcoming provincial and federal elections. But as the commission has clarified, there is still room to employ electronic voting in these elections, at least in places with relatively high voter education. We could not do it soon enough. Increasingly adept at using apps and appliances, Nepalis, with a bit of education, are more than capable of exercising their franchise electronically.
