KATMANDU, Nepal: The people of Nepal flocked to the polls Thursday for landmark elections that close a bloody chapter in the country's history even as they usher in a whole new set of worries for the future.
The elections are the first in which Maoist guerrillas, having agreed to cease their 10-year-old war against the state, are contending for power by electoral means. They are among 54 parties vying for seats in a 601-member assembly charged with rewriting the Constitution and governing the country in the meantime, for up to three years.
The transition from war to peace has not been a smooth one and the violence that characterized the campaign season spilled over into Election Day. In one place, the Election Commission said, ballot boxes were tossed into a body of water.
The Associated Press reported that two men, including Sambhu Prashad Singh, an independent candidate, were killed. In addition, Maoists torched a polling station in the central village of Galkot and unidentified gunmen shot at a candidate in Janakpur, a tense town in the southern plains where there have been often violent demands for greater autonomy. Polling was suspended at more than 30 stations, The AP reported, citing an election official.
Still, the vast majority of the nearly 10,000 polling sites were calm and orderly, according to the Election Commission and several international election observation teams.
The stakes could hardly be higher, for the Constituent Assembly, as it is called, will decide everything, including whether a nearly 240-year-old monarchy will be abolished, what new rights will be extended to its long marginalized communities, even the very system of government.
"This election," said Navaraj Suwal, a schoolteacher, "will determine the kind of laws that will be around for the next hundred years." Suwal, 42, was so excited that he showed up to his polling site in Kavre district, east of the capital, a half hour before it was scheduled to open.
Jimmy Carter, the former U.S. president, called it the most "transformational" of the 70 elections he had observed around the world. His Carter Center is among several international observer teams deployed across the country.
Election results will not be final for several weeks.
When results are released, the worry is whether the three major parties will accept them, or use them as an occasion to stir up more unrest. That is particularly true of the Maoists, who are under considerable pressure to show their cadres some semblance of victory after a decade of hardship and war.
It is impossible to gauge the chances of the three major parties, but the chances of any one party winning a landslide majority is slim, which is both a danger and a blessing. On one hand, it will force politicians of different stripes to work together. On the other, it will ensure that no single ideology will drive the constitutional agenda, and will force the Maoists to compromise or lose influence over the process altogether.
The elections were also widely seen as a formal end to the war, offering yesterday's insurgents a chance to gain power through the ballot box. They have already in effect shot their way into government.
They were given 83 seats in the current interim legislature, in exchange for signing a peace deal and locking up their guns under United Nations supervision.
The Maoist chairman, known by his nom de guerre, Prachanda, or "The Fierce One," has promised to abide by the election outcome. That has not stopped his supporters from splashing graffiti all over the capital that declares Prachanda the new president. Nepal does not have a presidential system of government, but the Maoists have proposed the abolition of the monarchy in favor of a strong executive.
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