KATHMANDU: A crude bomb exploded early on election day in Nepal yesterday, injuring three children as millions turned out for a poll seen as crucial in stabilising the Himalayan country after a civil war.
The explosive planted in a middle-class residential neighbourhood in the capital Kathmandu went off three hours after polling stations opened, with another five hoax bombs recovered by police.
“I was passing by when I saw three children lying on the ground, crying for help,” 28-year-old eyewitness Saroj Maharjan said, where voters said they were now terrified. “One of the children, whose face was covered in blood, fainted in my arms as I carried him to a nearby hospital,” he added.
A splinter faction of the Maoist party has vowed to disrupt the poll which many hope will jumpstart the peace process and push lawmakers to write a long-awaited constitution. Anti-poll protestors have torched vehicles and hurled explosives at traffic in recent days, but election officials said the threats had not deterred millions from turning up to vote.
“So far, around 50 percent of registered voters have voted,” Election Commission spokesman Bir Bahadur Rai said by midafternoon. “The elderly as well as people living in remote parts of the country have voted. The overall mood is buoyant,” he said.
The Maoist party, led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known better by his nom-de-guerre Prachanda, swept the first constituent assembly polls in 2008, two years after signing a peace deal. Since then, five prime ministers have served brief terms, the country had no leader for long periods, and the 601-member assembly collapsed in May 2012 after failing to agree on a new constitution.
Hopes of political reconciliation were dashed when a 33-party alliance, led by the splinter Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M), announced that it would boycott the polls and intimidate voters.
The alliance says the vote cannot be held under the interim administration headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court and want polls to be postponed until a cross-party government is put in place.
“Had the anti-poll groups organised peaceful protests, they could have questioned the legitimacy of the elections,” Akhilesh Upadhyay, editor in chief of The Kathmandu Post, said. “How can they gain political traction while even children have been brutally attacked?” One person has been killed and more than 360 arrested over the last week, police say.
Security has been tightened across the country as a result, with the government deploying 50,000 soldiers and 140,000 police to guard polling stations.
Measures include a ban on all public and most private transport, meaning that nearly all voters had to walk to polling stations to cast their ballot.
Centenarian Lal Bahadur Rai was the first person to vote at a polling station in northeastern Sankhuwasabha District.
AFP
