Stick To Poll Promises

Now all political parties have gone on the stump with their respective election manifestoes for federal and provincial elections slated for November 20. As the Election Commission (EC) has allowed the parties to organise mass rallies and meetings, the parties have used this occasion to solicit the people by handing over their commitment papers to them. The manifestoes contain the parties’ pledges to the people regarding their vision, policies and programmes. In multiparty democracy, the poll manifestoes serve as the reference materials for both candidates and the voters. Despite being a denominator of the parties, the poll manifestoes, as the experts argue, have lost their relevance owing to the apathy of both the parties as well as the people. The parties often stack manifestoes with their unrealistic promises and pay little or no attention to them while in power. They make these official promises in rush without giving enough time for the public to pore over and pass comments on them.

 They forget what they had pledged in the past manifestoes and issue the new ones as a mere formality to woo the voters ahead of the polls. As a news report of this daily states, the parties have come up with some baseless plans and programmes without considering the state’s resources and capacity to implement them. It is not bad to set ambitious agenda for development but they must be based on the ground realities. In their manifestos, the major political parties – CPN -UML, Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN- Maoist Centre – have promised to achieve the double-digit growth and more than double the current per capita income (PCI). The UML claims to increase the size of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to Rs. 10 trillion and PCI to US$ 2400. The size of Nepali economy was Rs. 4.8 trillion in the last Fiscal Year 2021/22. The NC has announced to make Nepal the middle-income nation in the next 10 years. However, it should have the Gross National Income (GNI) per capita between US$ 4,046 and $12,535 to be the middle-income country. Nepal’s PCI in 2021/22 is $ 1372 and GNI per capita $ 1381.

Nepal’s PCI and GNI per capita growth has always been modest. It took more than a decade for PCI and GNI to increase by $558 and $563 respectively since 2010/11. Both saw significant growth after the Gorkha Earthquake of 2015. Nepal has never secured double-digit growth in the last 11 years. There was negative growth during the earthquake and it stood at 2.4 per cent in 2019/20 during the pandemic. It was only during the post-quake reconstruction that the economic growth was above 6 per cent. In the last fiscal year, the GDP growth stood at 5.3 per cent and the World Bank has recently estimated that the economy would grow only by 5.1 per cent in the current fiscal 2022/23 and 4.9 per cent next year. 

Instead of promising the moon, the parties should concentrate on resolving the current economic problems hitting the consumers and business sector. Soaring prices of commodities is likely to dampen the prospect of desired economic growth in coming years. There is an urgency to tackle the widening trade deficit, depleting foreign exchange reserves, liquidity crunch and modestly growing remittances. Interest rates of banks have reached as high as 16 per cent, forcing the business people to come to the streets. The parties must be pragmatic and stick to their promise when they are able to lead the government. Promises they make now should be based on reality that are actually doable.