By Sagar Prasai
Sagar Prasai is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Nepal. He can be reached at sagar@taf.org.np.
Think about the difficulties of writing a constitution for a country like Nepal. There are 103 ethnic groups, 17 officially recognized languages, and 19,000 former combatants still in cantonments. In the Constituent Assembly (CA), there are 25 political parties with no one in a clear majority, 601 members who disagree on most everything, 11 constitution drafting sub-committees, three committee rooms, and an anticipated 300,000 submissions to be read. Plus, barring public holidays, there are about 330 days left to complete the job.
Due to delays in every preparatory step – from drafting procedural rules to public consultations – the drafting calendar has become so compressed that if the CA seriously focuses on logistics, it is likely to fail politically. If it seriously focuses on politics, it is likely to fail logistically.
Read more »