Hay Days of Nepali Communists
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- Published on Sunday, 29 November -0001 16:00
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin ... No. 1537 ... January 9, 2018
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Hay Days of Nepali Communists
Farooq Tariq
Communists have won a landslide victory in the elections for House of Representatives of Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal held in two phases on 26th November and 7th December 2017. In a parliament of 275, the elections were held for 165 seats under the first past the post system (FPTP) and the rest, 110 seats, were by proportional system. Farooq Tariq visited Nepal for four days after the election results were announced from 13/17 December 2017 and reports.
The Communist Party Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist UML) won 80 seats under FPTP while their Left Front partner CPN (Maoist Center) won 36 seats. The ruling Nepali Congress (NC) could gain only 23 seats. The Communists won 116 seats... out of 165 in total. Two parties based in Madhes, in southern Nepal, the Rastriya Janata Party-Nepal (RJPN) and the Sanghiya Samajbadi Forum (SSF), combined to secure 21 seats; other fringe parties won the remaining five seats.
In the proportional system for the 110 seats, UML got 33.25 per cent vote while Congress came second with 32.78 per cent. The Maoist Center got 13.66 per cent votes.
In total, out of the 275 seats in the House of Representatives, the left alliance holds 174 (121 for the CPN-UML and 53 for the Maoists), the NC 63, the RJPN 17, and the SSF 16.
The Congress was at the losing end in the FPTP system as the Communists united and put up joint candidates under a 60/40 formula in favor of UML. It was mainly one-against-one race in the elections under the new 2015 constitution that made the difference in favor of Communists unlike the past parliamentarian practices, when three main parties were contesting against each other during the last 2013 and 2008 general elections.