Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which closely monitored the April 10 ballot, also welcomed decisions of the Electoral Commission to require re-polling in the limited number of centers where elections went less smooth.
First reports suggested Thursday, April 17, that Nepal’s former Maoist rebels extended their strong lead, as voters in five constituencies peacefully recast their ballots.
Voting irregularities on election day, April 10, meant re-polling was required in 22 out of 240 constituencies. Two others have already been re-polled and voting will be done in the other constituencies in coming days, officials said.
VOTE COUNTING
With vote counting under way in the dual first-past-the-post and proportional representation system, the Maoists had won a total of 116 seats out of a total of 220 seats already allocated, according to initial results.
Last week’s polls were seen as a climax of a 2006 peace deal between Nepal’s former rebel Maoists and the government. The peace pact ended a 10-year guerrilla war that killed some 13,000 people.
CSW’s Chief Executive Mervyn Thomas told BosNewsLife that his group now hopes that a new constitution “that the elected representatives will be tasked with writing” will guarantee “all those principles of human rights which Nepal has accepted, by adopting international conventions, particularly the right to full religious freedom.”
CHRISTIANS OPPRESSED
Minority Christians have long been oppressed in the world’s only Hindu kingdom, according to rights watchers, although local churches said they were encouraged that some 25,000 people, many of them Christians, were able to attend an unprecedented Easter Rally last month in the capital Kathmandu.
Thomas said CSW has urged the international community to encourage Nepal to enshrine international religious and other rights conventions in the new constitution and "to give every possible support to the elected representatives in this endeavor."
