NEPAL: PREDICTING THE ELECTION OUTCOME ISN'T EASY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KATHMANDU 000398 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/09/2018 TAGS: PGOV PTER KDEM NP SUBJECT: NEPAL: PREDICTING THE ELECTION OUTCOME ISN'T EASY Classified By: Ambassador Nancy J. Powell. Reasons 1.4 (b/d) Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) The center-left Communist Party of Nepal - United Marxist Leninist (UML) is likely to the biggest winner of Nepal's April 10 Constituent Assembly election. However, not even the UML expects it will win a majority of the Assembly's 601 seats. Prime Minister G.P. Koirala's center-right Nepali Congress will probably be very close behind. Despite grandiose claims of imminent victory -- and rampant voter intimidation -- post expects that the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) will place third. We anticipate that the four important Madhesi parties collectively will earn more seats than the Maoists, but that the top two Madhesi parties will themselves be almost evenly divided. The three so-called "royalist" parties, the minor left parties and a few single-seat parties should round out the Assembly's membership. The possibility exists of a runaway Maoist victory but we consider that outcome to be very unlikely. UML Likely To Be the Election's Biggest Winner -------------- - ¶2. (C) On the eve of the Nepal's April 10 Constituent Assembly (CA) election, the center-left Communist Party of Nepal - United Marxist Leninist (UML) has reason to be optimistic. Based on our analysis, the UML is likely to win the most seats in the 601-member Assembly. (Note: The candidate who wins the most votes in each of 240 different first-past-the post or FPTP constituencies will receive a seat. An additional 335 seats will be awarded to parties based on how many votes that party received nationally on a separate proportional representation or PR ballot. The post-election cabinet will appoint the remaining 26 CA members. End note.) UML General Secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal told former U.S. President Jimmy Carter on April 9 that he expected UML to win an absolute majority, but this sounds like hyperbole. Senior UML contacts have repeatedly indicated that they anticipate obtaining no more than a plurality. Our best estimate is that UML will take home 75-85 FPTP seats and better than 100 PR seats, perhaps as many as 110. Congress To Be Close Behind -------------- ¶3. (C) Unlike the UML which was ready and eager to face the voters already when the CA election was scheduled for November 2007, the Nepali Congress (NC) party has continued to struggle in the intervening months to address its own internal issues. Its long-awaited reunification in September with Sher Bahadur Deuba's Nepali Congress - Democratic failed to resolve those conflicts. Trouble in the Terai, which is the party's traditional vote bank, has further harmed its prospects. In spite of brave talk by Prime Minister and Party President G.P. Koirala (Comment: He apparently told Mr. Carter that his party would win a majority) and some Embassy sources who see NC on top, post anticipates that it will have to settle for second place, although perhaps by a very small margin. Our best estimate is that NC will win 75-85 FPTP seats like the UML but slightly fewer PR seats than its rival party. Maoists To Be Third -------------- ¶4. (C) Meanwhile, the U.S.-terrorist list-designated Communist Party of Nepal - Maoist (CPN-M or Maoists) will probably place no better than third. For weeks, the Maoists have been acting publicly as if their overwhelming victory in the April 10 CA polls was a foregone conclusion. Perhaps the most telling example has been their campaign to proclaim Maoist chief Pushpa Dahal (aka Prachanda) as the first President of Nepal after the election. According to at least KATHMANDU 00000398 002 OF 003 one Embassy contact, the Maoists in private are less sanguine. A businessman reported to us recently that Prachanda had himself predicted a month previously that the CPN-M would win only 60 seats, and had added ominously that the Maoists had not waged a revolution for that poor a showing. The Maoists' widespread voter intimidation campaign, particularly in Nepal's remote hilly and mountainous districts, could skew the final results in the CPN's favor, but how much is not clear. We estimate Prachanda and company will end up with 20-30 FPTP seats and perhaps 45-55 PR seats. If Not Divided, Madhesi Parties Could Overshadow Maoists -------------- -------------- ¶5. (C) During the second half of February, the three United Democratic Madhesi Front parties successfully used a two-week general strike in the Terai to cut Kathmandu's economic lifeline to India and force political concessions from the Prime Minister. But once they decided to participate in the election, the parties began squabbling. Ultimately, only two of the parties -- Mahanta Thakur's Terai-Madhes Democratic Party (TMDP) and Rajendra Mahato's Sadbhavana Party (SP), both newly established -- agreed not to compete against each other. Upendra Yadav's Madhesi People's Rights Forum (MPRF), which came to prominence in the early 2007 Madhesi uprising, chose to go it alone. The Embassy's sources in the Terai expect their disunity to cost them. Our best estimate is that they may capture as as many as 90 seats with the TMDP and the MPRF dividing some 80 or so of those seats between them and SP grabbing the rest. We expect that the only Madhesi party in Nepal's current governing coalition, the small Nepal Sadbhavana Party (Anandadevi),from which SP split, will be wiped out. "Royalists," Minor Left and the Rest -------------- ¶6. (C) The winners of the approximately 30-40 remaining, elected seats in the Assembly will likely fall into three categories: the so-called "royalist" parties, the minor left parties and a few single-seat parties. The then-royalist National Democratic Party (commonly known by its Nepali acronym, RPP) placed third in Nepal's last general election in 1999, but it has since splintered into three parties. The main faction is headed by Pashupati Rana (the grandson of the last Rana Prime Minister and the father of the woman over whom Crown Prince Dipendra allegedly killed his father, mother and relatives in the 2001 Palace Massacre). It should win 5 to 15 seats. The much smaller Rastrya Janashakti Party (RJP) headed by former Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa will be fortunate to win half that number. The Kamal Thapa-led RPP-Nepal, which is the only significant Nepali party openly advocating for retaining the monarchy, will probably lose out completely. We expect three minor left parties -- including two small partners in the governing alliance (People's Front Nepal or PFN and Nepal Workers and Peasants Party) and a PFN faction -- altogether perhaps a dozen seats. A handful of single (PR)-seat parties, drawing support primarily from "janajati" (indigenous nationality) voters, should complete the 12 to 15 parties laying claim to the 575 elected positions in the Assembly. Wild Cards -------------- ¶7. (C) The most obvious wild card in the election are the Maoists. No one will know until the votes are counted if their voter intimidation campaign -- and the history of the decade-long insurgency from 1996 to 2006 -- had the desired effect of compelling voters to cast their ballots for the hammer and the sickle (or not vote at all). This coupled with the youth and protest vote drawn by the Maoists' young candidate lists and their revolutionary message could bring the Maoists a runaway victory on April 10. The possibility also exists, however, and we consider this much more likely, KATHMANDU 00000398 003 OF 003 that there will be a backlash against the abuses that the Maoist Young Communist League in particular has committed since late 2006 and an unwillingness to vote for the CPN-M because of lingering fears of a Maoist takeover. Perhaps the more likely dark horse party is the RPP-Nepal. With even the Nepali Congress having formally abandoned its support for a king (baby or otherwise),Kamal Thapa could attract a significant number of voters who earnestly desire to retain Nepal's monarchy. Comment -------------- ¶8. (C) Nepal has not held a general election in 9 years and the country has changed greatly in that time. The electorate is very young -- almost 50 percent of the approximately 17.5 million registered voters are under 35. More than 20 percent of the electorate will be casting ballots for the first time. With the rise of ethnic identity, traditional party loyalties may disappear. This is also the first general election in which Nepalis will be casting two ballots. The extent to which voters will "split" their votes, casting the first-past-the-post ballot for one party or candidate and the PR ballot for a different party is a huge variable. Turnout is another. As Roddy Chalmers, the International Crisis Group's long-time observer of Nepal commented in his April 2 report, the electoral outcome "defies confident prediction." While there is widespread enthusiasm for the Constituent Assembly election, there continues to be considerable dissatisfaction with the status quo. Public unhappiness with the failure of the current Nepali government, which is dominated by the NC, to deliver the progress -- and prosperity -- that was expected in the wake of the April 2006 People's Movement is immediately apparent. These factors combined with the failure by an aged and infirm Prime Minister Koirala to groom a new generation of NC leaders and the UML's far better record of internal democracy, its broad base, as well as its ability to claim it represents change should give it a slight advantage. POWELL