What will the voters decide once they pull open the makeshift curtain hiding the polling box in a kind of solitude created with care? We don't know the answer, but they will brush aside the impolite political speeches made by leaders and the deafening election brouhaha. That is a moment of freedom—free from the anxiety of who will form the government. Analysts say such uncertainty has become the character of modern democracies. The political parties and their leaders, by shifting the emphasis of political ideologies and principles of action, appear to be creating democracy fatigue among the people today.

Each voter knows that the voting system was created and nurtured by the big parties. There was unflinching faith in the polling practice and the democratic system. The first democratically elected prime minister Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala had faith in the spirit and structuralism of the democratic system. As a result, a general election was held in February-April as provided by the 1959 Constitution to elect the 109 members of the first House of Representatives. Koirala's faith in the system may even be gauged from the fact that he put the need to amend the constitution on the back burner. By using the constitution, King Mahendra dissolved the House and Koirala's government and jailed him in 1960. After that, a monotheistic Panchayat system was introduced. But the irony of that system is that it too continued the practice of voting, and the voters entered similar tiny shelters to cast their votes. But the difference is that they did not have the freedom of choice today's voters have. The voter today knows that one is voting in and for a system that is democratic. And this knowledge is shared by Nepali society.

Story of instability

The voters will not know what they will gain or lose in this election, but they will know that this is the end of the spectacular election related activities and exchanges of vitriol among the party supremos pushing 70 or more. With a history of frequent “rise and fall” of governments in the past 27 years, the very concept of general election has made its impact as a story of instability. The voter pausing inside the polling booth would find this background a natural construct of party hegemony that all have willingly accepted, but without knowing what shape the coming government will take.

The win-and-lose phenomenon might create a situation of agitation exacerbated by the activities of the vote-deniers, a term added to the English language by the events in a great democratic country in recent times. The other fear the quiet voter in the solitary voting booth might feel is that a culture of blockading the very function of Parliament might also be in order. Some voters, as far as I know, fear that a series of actions may happen that may not bode well for democracy in this land. This is related to the rise of a psyche of first tinkering with the constitutional process and thereby plunging the democratic system into some kind of a confusing state. But as a great believer in the democratic strength and the power of the people of this land, I believe that no such developments will succeed.

Though the voter knows that a single vote will not change the political system, which is a reality, his or her single vote will add up to the strength of the common opinion and shape the final results of the election. The history of democratic polls in this country, though disrupted at different times, says that the strength of taking the system forward has always been an important factor in the continuity of ideology in Nepali politics. Therefore, today is the day of freedom for the voters who will fulfil their civic responsibility and elect the 275 members to the House of Representatives through the two-ballot system.

Common pattern

The entire electioneering has been moving around the personalities of some political leaders and their discourses that have more to do with personal character stories, narratives of rivalries and mistrust than ideologies. The election, as such, is an important democratic exercise and also the central energy of the political process. The election marks the day of voters' freedom because they will be free from all physical and psychological pressures while casting their votes. For that reason, the voters of Nepal will exercise the most independent democratic right. The citizens of Nepal will surely take this moment to elect the representatives who they believe will be central in giving continuity to the democratic process that has started functioning, albeit in a very challenging situation both inside and outside the country. What makes election day all the more meaningful is that throughout the campaigning, the voters' responses have exhibited one common pattern.

Many people I watched on television and encountered through other news portals felt betrayed by the candidates who came to ask for votes during the last election with a package of promises and have returned without fulfilling any of them. In their narratives, several voters say they are in dire straits with no place to live and food to eat. Life has become more difficult because of the pandemic and ecological conditions such as floods, landslides and drought. The candidate of a particular constituency cannot ameliorate the conditions of the people, for sure. But what seems to hurt them is the behaviour of the representatives who consider voters only as stepping stones. Moreover, the voters know that today's politics is dominated not by concern for the people's conditions but by lust for power and position. The voters know by watching, reading and sharing the news and directly encountering the problem that there is a reason to feel dismayed and betrayed. A culture of alterity, of othering is dominating the democratic political system of Nepal. The free voter will contemplate and decide what to do inside the polling booth.