Local Governments
Partisan Or Non-Partisan?

Mukti Rijal

WHETHER local bodies should be partisan or freed from the yoke of party politics is being discussed often despite the fact that the Local Self Governance Act provides for party based electoral process at the local level. It puts at rest the debate for the time being. But in a democracy, pluses and minuses of each and every proposition or provision should come in for sharper scrutiny. Moreover, experiences acquired or lesson learnt from practice, provide inputs for deliberation to arrive at more appropriate conclusions. The subject of partisan oriented or non-partisan local governments calls for discussions time and again.

Unimaginable

When this writer raises, the issue with elected officials at the local level-VDCs and DDCs, the views held is not unanimous. They are divided. there is also subdued fear to speak for non-partisan local governments least one could be accused of being supportive of the partyless ideas. In practical terms, partyless local governments are almost unimaginable or inconceivable.

Even during the partyless Panchayat era the banned political parties - the Nepali Congress and leftists - fielded their candidates without expressly naming them or extended clandestine and informal support to the candidates of their preference in the elections. In a society that is infested with political polarisation, politics can not be detached or separeted from the elections at the local level. There is the similar experience from the state of Karnataka of India. The state of Karnataka has non-partisan Gram Panchayats in formal terms. However, party politics is almost the decisive element in the local units.

There are several benefits associated with multiparty-based local elections. The political parties contest election on programmes and issues. Performance and delivery may hold the key. Voters have programmatic choices; not the election based on the influence of personalities. Parties are generally expected to nominate candidates competent enough to deliver and perform well. The opposition at the local government units will keep alert to expose the ruling party while party in power will strive to outsmart the opposition.

Multiparty competitive election is generally expected to enhance political acculturation at the local level. People are educated politically and also offered opportunities to compare, discriminate right and wrong. Parties compete to convince people and establish the merit of their manifest ideas. Moreover, political parties sustain on inner party discipline and those breaching it are subject to action.

It is believed that political parties keep their people elected to local governments within the boundary of discipline. And those people bent on misusing resources and tarnishing the image of the party are liable to face action or being disowned by the party.

Local bodies are said to be nurseries of the political leaders. The leadership can grow and gain maturity to take up challenges of national level if they are trained well at the local level.

This can only be ensured if multiparty competition is fostered at the local level. The positive aspects of the partisan oriented local bodies are numerous and thus politically relevant in multiparty democracy. However, some positive aspects seem more theoretical and it is difficult to translate them into practical plane. Experiences gathered over the past few years in Nepal indicate that partisan oriented local bodies are not free from defects as well. Local issues are overly politicised and community is split along the partisan interest.

Development activities are thus forged as to suit to the party interests. Elected officials work more as party functionaries, not as independent elected representatives of the people. In some cases, local bodies are reduced to forum for serving party interests and propagating partisan views. Development projects in some cases are allegedy selected to benefit the constituents of political parties.

In others, political deadlock has hampered the execution of development activities. Local bodies are in the state of impasse. Local cooperation activities. Local cooperation and support in some cases have become difficult to mobilise as politically motivatad conflicts have filtered down to the communities.

Far Discussion

The negative fallouts cannot be advanced as the sole reasons to reverse the process and convert the local bodies forum non-partisan. But there should be open and fair discussion on the issue to create room for correction and reform. Democracy allows for non partisan local governments as well. Even in the United States of America, local governments are non partisan in some states. Democracy allows free and free debate for which we should not backtrack.

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