A section of the Nepali Congress leaders and cadres has stepped up pressure on party leadership to hold the 15th general convention in December next year, in line with the provisions of the party statute. As the party establishment is yet to start the process of holding conventions of local chapters in the lead up to the main event next year, members from the rival faction have, in the past couple of weeks, intensified their campaign. This is the right thing to do in order to keep the party on the right track and add dynamism to the organisation. Timely conventions are vital for the health of party organizations and to rejuvenate cadres. Party members—old and new—want a predictable system of holding general convention and electing leaders, from the grassroots to the centre, through healthy competition.

A general convention may seem a purely internal matter of the concerned party. But it’s an issue of public concern as well. In a republican system, political parties lead the government. From lawmakers to ministers, chief ministers to prime ministers, all come from political parties. Politicians also choose everyone from heads of constitutional bodies to the heads of state. So the importance of who leads the political parties and how they are elected goes beyond the immediate party circles. This is especially true of the leaders of the big parties like the Nepali Congress and the CPN-UML.

Strengthening intra-party democracy is the only way to ensure that wrong people don’t make it to the parties’ leadership. Timely election of leaders, from the local to the central level, makes a political party stronger and by extension strengthens democracy. If history is any guide, the political parties that have cultivated strong intra-party democracy have succeeded in national politics as well.

The Congress, the largest party in the House of Representatives, has of late adopted some progressive practices. For instance, earlier, the party president had the authority to pick one of the two general secretaries and a vice-president. The party chiefs would invariably handpick their loyalists. But starting the last general election, the country’s grand-old-party started electing both the general secretaries and all vice-presidents through direct voting of convention delegates. That helped two relatively young leaders—Gagan Thapa and Bishwa Prakash Sharma—become party general secretaries. This development had greatly boosted confidence among the party’s youths. In sum, these progressive practices added vigour to the Congress.

But the party has consistently failed to hold its conventions on time. The party charter has a provision that allows the office-bearers to serve for an additional year if the organisation faces an unforeseen crisis. But the Congress leadership has embraced this term extension as a normal thing, rather than see it as an exception. So it is only right that this time there is pressure on the party establishment to follow the charter and bring the derailed system back on track. As Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba is not running for the party’s executive role again, he would perhaps want to bow out as the president who did his bit to strengthen internal democracy and hand over the party’s reins to a competent successor.