When the four political parties, egged on by the international community, finally agreed to set up an interim election government led by the incumbent Chief Justice in March it was instructed to hold elections in three months. It took Chairman Khil Raj Regmi three months just to set the date for polls.

The blame doesn’t all go to Regmi, of course, because although he formally heads the government, the four-party syndicate was effectively giving orders. And since they couldn’t agree on amending clauses of the electoral laws dealing with delineation of constituencies, the threshold for proportional representation and the ban on candidates with criminal records, the date for elections couldn’t be set.

Last week, the four parties ran out of excuses for dilly dallying, and told Regmi: “You do it”. And on 14 June, the cabinet set 19 November as the date for elections. It is a measure of just how paralysed Nepali politics has become that even setting a belated date for elections is regarded as an achievement. Needless to say, the public greeted the announcement with a yawn. Given the track record of the parties, there is widespread public skepticism that they will stick to even that date.

Indeed, there are still many hurdles to cross between now and November and they can be categorized as technical, and political. Nearly three million Nepalis at any given time live and work abroad, and not giving nearly a quarter of voters the chance to cast absentee ballots makes a mockery of democracy. The Election Commission may not have enough time to sort it out, but absentee voting for overseas Nepalis must be an option for the next general election. Then there is the issue of the estimated two million citizens who were not yet 18 in the last elections and who need voter IDs by November. Electronic voting is not going to be feasible because there are just too many political parties, which means it will be December by the time the final results of the elections can be formally announced.

But by far the most worrying aspect is the opposition to elections from the CPN-M, the Madhes Front led by Upendra Yadav and the newly formed Federal Socialist Party led by Ashok Rai. Together with 33 other small parties, they oppose elections conducted by the CJ-led government, want the High Level Political Committee disbanded and certain aspects of the constitution firmed up before they agree to elections.

None of these demands look so inscrutable that they can’t be resolved through dialogue, which leads us to the conclusion that the small parties just want to be taken more seriously. The Dash Maoists, for their part, are just bargaining for a greater role in the parent party. Knowing this, the government needs to be firm on conducting elections, yet flexible on enough to bring the disgruntled into the fold.

One confidence-building measure could be for Regmi to abandon his Chief Justice post. The HLPC has outlived its usefulness, so it might as well be scrapped. But the Regmi and the EC must set strict guidelines to make the polls free of intimidation, vote-buying and cheating. It must have a code of conduct for campaigning and draw a red line on electioneering that provokes an ethnic flareup.

The other parties are playing politics with the boy cotters because of the perceived advantage they see from it for themselves. The UCPN(M) may find it advantageous to use the CPN-M to disrupt elections if it feels by November that it can’t get a majority. The NC-UML could be calculating that if it can keep the Maoists divided, it will split the vote. There must be similar electoral calculations about Upendra Yadav among the Madhesi parties.

Whatever the case, we see no compelling reason now not to have elections in November. There is the whole question of whether the new CA will get stuck once more on the contentious issues that deadlocked the last assembly. But, first things first, we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

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Three new books about the Nepal conflict take us back to the horrors of war
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The occasion was a multiple book launch this week in Kathmandu in which three protagonists who experienced and suffered the war first hand sat on a stage together to reminisce about what it was all for.

One of them was a committed Maoist child soldier who spent his entire teenage years during the conflict killing and nearly being killed. One was a nurse-turned-health worker who lived through a night of hell caught in the crossfire between the Maoists and the Army. One was a teacher from Rolpa who was detained by the Maoists, interrogated and tortured for 100 days during the war.

Radha Poudel’s memoir, Khalanga Ma Hamala, relives the minute details of the battle of Jumla and how that close brush with death motivated her to continue to work for the upliftment of the people of Jumla. Narayan Subedi wrote 100 Din Maobadi Kabja Ma, and was a teachers who found himself on the frontlines of the conflict and gives a chilling account of the idealism that drove the revolution. Navin Jirel recounts the memories of his childhood, the battles he fought and his years languishing in a cantonment after the conflict, in his gripping book, Bhisan Dinharu. (See picture)

That the three could share the table to discuss their books without bitterness, rancour and political sloganeering was a sign of how far we have come since the conflict ended six years ago. If time heals, then books like these help the reconciliation process.

But, as Radha Poudel, reminded us, “The end of the war has not meant peace. The roots of the conflict are still there. As long as people are hungry, there will be war.”

The publishers, nepa-laya, had given Subedi the role of moderating a short discussion during the book launch. He said he was so traumatised by what he went through that he waited 10 years to publish his book. Radha Poudel went through similar doubts, but persevered because she thought it was important to tell the story so people understand the true meaning of peace, and value it. She teared up and said in a choking voice: “I had to go back to Jumla and help the people I went there to help.”

Jirel, now 24, said that just as Radha decided to go back to Jumla, he decided to go back to Jiri. He refused integration into the Nepal Army even though he would have got officer rank, because he didn’t want to “give and get salutes”. Instead he decided to devote himself to the betterment of the Nepalis he fought for and himself suffered during the war. He said: “I have to give back to Nepal, I have lots to do.”

When Jirel said that he had been afraid to be on stage, Subedi quipped: “I’m the one who should be afraid of you. But let’s not be afraid of each other ever again.”

Navin Jirel welcomes Pushpa Kamal Dahal at Kamidanda in Kavre during the conflict.

Navin Jirel was just 12 when his mother died. His brother and sister were sent off to an orphanage and Navin had to go and live with his uncle in Sindhupalchok. He wanted to come back to be with his friends at the school in Jiri, but couldn’t get admitted.

A Maoist he met treated with kindness and respect he never got from his relatives. So, out of despair and frustration, he decided to join the Maoists. They said he was too young, but he got enrolled as a whole timer and within a year had taken military training and served as a battlefield messenger in the attack on Salleri in November 2002. [http://nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=6894]

They had given him a pistol, and Navin writes in the book about how in the heat of battle he got so carried away he fired off a round into the air. He got a stiff reprimand for shooting from behind the lines. The boy was such a dedicated fighter he was promoted. At first they resented it, but seeing what a born warrior he was they admiringly called him “Phuchhe Commander”. “Finally I got friendship, and a sense of belonging and I found it enjoyable,”Navin recalls.

After that, Navin took part in the attacks on Bhakunde Besi, Sindhuli, Bandipur and Siraha. By age 18 he was such an effective guerrilla that he was in a select commando force. “I was addicted to war,” Navin now recalls, “during the ceasefire periods, I used to miss the sound of gunfire and wanted desperately to get back into action.”

THOSE WERE THE DAYS: Radha Poudel (centre, left) with village elders in a remote part of Jumla in 2002.

As a young girl in Chitwan, whenever Radha Poudel complained about not having new shoes or pencils, she remembers her father telling her that children in Jumla didn’t even have enough to eat. When she grew up, Radha became an anesthesiologist at Bharatpur Hospital and applied for a more senior position. There were only two openings: a relatively easy job in Rupendehi, or the hardships of Jumla. Without hesitation, she chose to go to Jumla.

Her father, who had worked in Jumla previously, tried to make her change her mind. It is dangerous, he said, there is a war going on and life is hard in the remote mountains. But Radha reminded her father that it was he who had inspired her to go to Jumla in the first place, and do something for the people there.

When she got to Jumla in 2001, Radha could not sleep at nights seeing how mothers died at child-birth, children toiled as porters to earn a living. It was fluke she wasn’t born there, she thought, and she was troubled by the low esteem with which the rest of Nepal looked at Jumlis. Radha got a job with a safe motherhood project supported by DFID and immediately set out to the remoter parts of the district to care for women even though it was a war zone. The security forces and the Maoists both looked at Radha with suspicion and thought she was an enemy spy.

In his book, Navin Jirel speaks matter-of-factly about killing and nearly getting killed, the exhilaration at the end of a battle, the sweet taste of victory and the sorrow of losing close friends. There are excruciating details of how in the attack on Siraha, Navin finds he is one of the few still alive in his unit after a falling electricity pylon electrocutes remaining comrades. Thirsty, he gropes in the darkness and finds a bowl with liquid and drinks it only to find it was urine. He gets shot, is rushed to a hospital across the border in Darbhanga.

Indian Police is on the lookout for wounded Nepali Maoists, and he makes a harrowing three-day journey on foot back to the Nepal border, changing the bandages on his shoulder and injecting himself with painkillers and antibiotics along the way. Even after that he takes part in the battle of Chautara and Thukarpa where he is nearly killed all over again.

Ironically, Navin’s worst memories are not of the war or of being wounded, but of the listless four years in the cantonment with ebbing morale and searing doubts about what it was all for. Students came to the cantonments to write theses on the Maoist guerrillas, and after giving lots of interviews Navin thought he should write his own book instead of telling a selective story second-hand.

After the battle of Jumla, Radha started writing down everything she remembered about the 13 terrifying hours of the fierce Maoist attack on Jumla on the night of 14 November 2002. The CDO, DSP and dozens of army and police were killed, and no one knows how many Maoists died. Radha first just hid under her quilt, thinking it would protect her. Bullets whizzed all around, hitting the ceiling and walls. The army’s helicopters hovered overhead, dropping mortar bombs, while the Maoists and the army exchanged fierce gunfire in the street below. He peeped out of the window to see captured policemen being beheaded like goats.

She went to hide in her landlady’s room, but a neighboring house caught fire and they were trapped between the smoke and the gunfire outside. Radha thought this was the end, but somehow survived the night. Radha kept working in Jumla, and got the Women Peacemaker Award last year for her selfless work in rural Nepal during the conflict. Radha’s first manuscript was lost, and she wrote it all over again from memory.

Radha says she will plough the royalty from Khalanga ma Hamala to her
group, Action Works Nepal, which works in Jumla, Kalikot and Achham to help the Karnali people to stand on their own feet. [http://nepalitimes.com/news.php?id=3046]

See also:

No peace after war

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3 May is World Press Freedom Day

Like many other things in life, you don’t know how important press freedom is until someone takes it away from you. Freedom of expression is such a wholesome concept no-one could possibly be against it. Yet press freedom is threatened around the world, and not just in totalitarian states.

There are many myths about press freedom, and another one is that it protects the rights of journalists. Not so. Freedom of expression is actually the right of all citizens, journalists are just the defenders of the public’s right to know.

For many of us doing day-to-day journalism in fragile states and transitional democracies press freedom is not just an ideal. In Nepal, our publication has been threatened by both the extreme left and the extreme right for upholding the values of press freedom, democracy and non-violence. In December 2008, our office was vandalised by goons belonging to the ruling party who physically assaulted staff members and me. The attack on our publication was trivial compared to what journalists in Nepal and other parts of the world have to face in their pursuit of independent journalism.

As a jury member of the Guillermo Cano-UNESCO Press Freedom Award for five years in the 2000s, I was struck by the courage and fortitude shown by many nominees from all over the world in their pursuit of the truth. Some paid for it with their lives, others were gravely wounded, and many were tortured and imprisoned.

The other myth about press freedom is that it is threatened only in repressive states. In fact in democracies, too, civil society and media have to be vigilant about the media being squeezed by politicians, state institutions and the market. In these countries the media is part of the political-industrial complex where the press is often used to propel politicians to power. Demagogues get elected because their jingoism and populism is magnified by a media beholden to them, and when they assume office they proceed to dismantle the very institutions that got them elected so as to perpetuate their rule. Press freedom and democracy are two sides of the same coin. If one is weak, the other side is also weakened. An independent, strong media supports democracy and vice versa.

Over-commercialisation of the media industry has also led to what John Pilger calls ‘censorship by exclusion’ where negative, unpalatable news are dropped because of advertising pressure. Thus the public service role of media is severely undermined.

In Nepal, when an autocratic regime tried to censor our newspaper we went to press with white spaces where the paragraphs were expunged. Radio stations that were ordered not to broadcast news, only music, started defiantly singing the news from their studios. Press freedom doesn’t come with any warranty; it has to be defended by its maximum application even in countries with long traditions of free press. Threats to media freedom don’t just come from tyrants and dictators, they come from owners who see it as just another business, from under-motivated journalists, and publishers who prefer trivia because it is cheaper and safer than doing serious in-depth journalism.

Chapter from the publication ‘Pressing for Freedom: 20 Years of World Press Freedom Day’ issued by UNESCO for the Press Freedom Day commemoration in Costa Rica on 3 May 2013.

The book can be viewed on pdf here.

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Everest rage is a result of the clash of two distinct climbing styles in the Himalaya, and was bound to happen sooner or later

On the month that Nepal is preparing to mark the 60^th anniversary of the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Sherpa, the news of gangland-style fight on Mt Everest has come as a brutal reminder of just how much climbing has changed.

The partnership between Hillary and Tenzing marked the beginning of a long tradition of teamwork between Sherpas and their mountaineer employers who valued their stamina, endurance and sure-footedness at high altitude. But the under-current of resentment between the ‘sahibs’ and their hired help had been growing. It reached boiling point last Saturday on the Western Cwm.

A Buddha figure on the summit of Mount Everest.

The incident on 27 April on the Lhotse Face below Camp III has shaken the mountaineering world, and divided the tourism fraternity into distinct camps depending on whose version of events they believe more. But the bottom line is that the worldwide publicity has hurt the reputation of both sides in the mountain fight.

It has also drawn attention to the over-commercialisation of the Everest industry that got international attention after the book and film ‘Into Thin Air’ by Jon Krakauer about the traffic jams on the summit ridge of Everest that led to the tragic loss of 12 lives in the spring of 1996.

The clash is between purists in mountaineering who say that the pioneering spirit of exploration and adventure has been eroded by large commercial expedition-style assaults on the mountain. Expedition climbing is a part of the Sherpas’ livelihood.

Jonathan Griffith (r), Ueli Steck (l) on a Facebook picture on the way to Kathmandu.

The fist-fight near Camp 3 this week between Sherpas and three world renowned Alpine-style climbers has been jokingly called the highest brawl in world history, and got worldwide attention in media, blogs and social networks.

Jonathan Griffith from Britain, Ueli Steck from Switzerland and Simone Moro from Italy climb Alpine-style which means they do not use Sherpas and climb in small groups of two or three without oxygen to climb some of the world’s most difficult faces.

Moro climbed Shisha Pangma South (8008 m) without oxygen in 27 hours in 1996, using skis in the descent from 7100 m. It was during his winter ascent of Annapurna South Face that his climbing companions Anatoli Boukreev and Dimitri Sobolev were killed in an avalanche.Steck climbed the difficult north face of Eiger when he was 18, and is reputedly one of the three best alpinists in Europe. He was part of the daring but unsuccessful rescue bid of Spanish climber Iñaki Ochoa de Olza in 2008, who had collapsed at nearly 8,000 m on Annapurna.

In this week’s fight, Steck sustained facial injuries from a rock thrown at him, and Moro survived a knife attack that hit his belt when a group of nearly 100 Sherpas attacked their tents when they descended to Camp II.

Simone Moro’s Facebook profile picture.

Jon Griffith told the Guardian: “There was a 50-minute period where we all thought we were going to get stoned to death.”

The attack was triggered by an altercation on the treacherous Lhotse Face where the Sherpas from different expeditions were fixing ropes. The trio were climbing freely, and had to traverse the rope at one particularly exposed spot on the slope.

The Sherpas say the three climbers continued climbing even after being asked not to, and at one point they met near the rope. Moro is said to have hurled expletives in Nepali at the Sherpas, as well as on the open walkie-talkie. Back at Camp II, it got physical.

Says a Namche-based businessman, echoing a popular sentiment there: “The western media as usual is lapping up the blogs by these three guys and the Sherpas haven’t had a chance to tell their side of the story. The three flouted the etiquette of mountaineering and demeaned them with foul language.”

On Monday at base Camp, Moro and his team and the Sherpas had a meeting in which both sides acknowledged their mistakes and promised not to repeat it.

Garrett Madison, a five-time Everest summiteer and guide wrote the first objective account of the fight in a blog on Outside Online saying: ‘In climbing … Mt Everest all the teams collaborate in working together to ultimately achieve a mutual goal to reach the top safely, and the Sherpa are a major part of this goal. I sincerely hope that this incident does not damage how the Sherpas perceive the foreigners who come to climb on their mountain.’

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Kunda Dixit’s speech on 9 March 2013 to the graduating A-Level class of St Xavier’s College Kathmandu.

Our job as journalists is to report on the speeches of politicians, not to give speeches ourselves. Maybe the real reason you invited me here is because I am a double graduate of St Xaviers. After passing out from St Xaviers High School in Godavari, I went on to college in St Xavier’s Bombay.

After getting my first masters in microbiology, I decided that injecting laboratory rats was not what I wanted to do so I got another masters in journalism from Columbia University. After that I worked for BBC Radio in New York and became a foreign correspondent covering conflicts across Asia. In 1997, I returned to Nepal to start our publications.

I soon found out that covering a war in your own country is completely different from covering other people’s wars. Unlike war correspondents covering battles, we had to learn to look for the roots of conflict. The seeds of war are laid in peace time, the precursors of violence lie in prevailing inequality, injustice and intolerance.

But as we have seen in the past seven years, the end of the war hasn’t meant peace. We struggle to find leaders with vision, integrity and statesmanship and a system of governance that will ensure equity and justice into the future.

The favorite Nepali past-time is not to gamble at cards, it is to find nasty things to say about each other. Of course, not all Nepalis are like that but the loudest, most privileged, best educated and most well off among us just can’t bear to see fellow-Nepalis get ahead.

We overlook the visible faults in ourselves but spend endless hours dissecting the imagined shortcomings of fellow-Nepalis. Just look at politicians, they can’t say or do anything that gives us hope—all they do day in and day out is run each other down. And we in the media spread the cynicism by treating politics as one big endless quarrel.

This obsession with finding fault is self-perpetuating, self-fulfilling and self-defeating. It is this refusal to see any goodness in our own kind that I think is at the heart of Nepal’s present crisis. We love to whine and we love to play victim, it is as if we want Nepal to fail so that our own catastrophic predictions will be proven right. It is as if we need Nepal to stay poor because that would give us the excuse we need to emigrate, or to do nothing.

I just got back yesterday from Dadeldhura and Doti districts. In those rugged mountains of far-western Nepal ravaged by poverty and conflict, what struck me was that despite their desperation and despair the people still had faith in the future, they still had hope. It is the legendary capacity of the Nepali people to confront and survive hardships, it is our reliance on each other and our communities that makes us strong.

What a contrast to be back here in Kathmandu. It is us, the most-privileged Nepalis, who are the most cynical about ourselves. It is here in the pampered capital with all its relative affluence that we wallow in pessimism and low self-esteem.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, what is there to be positive about? But, let’s face it, it’s not original anymore to complain about the load-shedding, the shortage of water or petrol, the garbage and pollution, or the political instability, corruption and bandhs. These are all givens. When everyone faces the same problems, it’s not cool anymore to complain about them.

The real question is what are we doing, individually or as communities, to make things better? How determined are we to make a difference? Do you curse the darkness, or do you install a solar panel? Do you complain about water shortage or harvest the rain? Do you complain about the garbage, or sort and recycle your waste?

It is when the going gets tough that the tough get going. Like Dikshya Chapagain, who rescues women abandoned in the streets. Like Pushpa Basnet, a graduate of your school’s social work program, who helps children of mothers who are in jail. Like Hari Bairagi who, instead of complaining about politics, went back to his home district of Sankhuwasabha rehabilitated two hydropowerplants, started selling the electricity to finance three colleges in Khandbari. Or Bhakta Bahadur Balayar, whom I met in Doti last week, who decided it was better to give up politics than to keep complaining about it. He now runs a community-managed school and hospital in a district with one of the lowest literacy and child survival rates in the country.

All that is wrong with Nepal, our rulers, our society are a result of the collective failure of previous generations. It is tragic that we have passed on to you, today’s graduating students, a Nepal that is in tatters. But here at St Xaviers you have been given the tools to surmount the problems. It is not what you learn that matters, it is how you use what you learn.

Like any product, Nepal is a brand. We Nepalis are its brand builders. You, graduates, are Nepal’s brand ambassadors. Wherever you go in the world, whatever you do, whenever you excel in studies or sports, whenever you show simple acts of kindness and compassion, whenever you do well, the country does well. Nepal does well.

Let’s all invest our energy on making ourselves proud to be Nepali. Individually and collectively let’s celebrate what is still good about Nepal: our incredible natural beauty, our immense diversity, our dignified and hardworking people, our generosity and sense of self-worth.

All it needs is for us to believe a little more in ourselves, and to give back to society only a bit of what our society gave to us. We owe it to our motherland, it’s the only one we will ever have.

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The Far Western districts of Nepal have a reputation for being neglected and more under-developed than the rest of the country. But in the past 15 years, they have taken great strides in transportation, infrastructure and child and maternal survival.

There are now roads in almost all the VDCs of Dadeldhura and Doti and the two districts are linked to once-remote Achham, Bajura, Bajhang, and even Darchula. There is now 3G mobile connection in the district capitals and signals all along the smoothly paved highways.

Dadeldhura’s maternal mortality rate was worse than sub-Saharan Africa 20 years ago, with more than 1,500 out of 100,000 dying at childbirth. Today, that figure is 450. Under-five child mortality has come down by more than half.

This is the photo report by Kunda Dixit in Doti.

A girl child holds a rhododendron to welcome visitors to the village of Domada in Dadeldhura. Female literacy is up to 50 per cent in a district where till recently only 10 per cent of girls went to school.

Pylons are being put up to bring 30MW of electricity from the Chameliya plant in Darchula which will be finished next year. The project has been delayed due to local extortion and threats.

Healthy winter monsoons have watered rain-fed terraces of wheat on the border between Doti and Dadeldhura, promising a good harvest this year.

Sunrise in Dadeldhura reveals layers of hills shaded by morning mist and hazy outline of the Api-Saipal range in Humla to the north.

The West Seti river as it meanders past Dipayal. A planned 200m high dam impounding a 20 sq km reservoir to generate 750MW of power for export to India has been delayed by 15 years, and its construction would give a big boost to the economy of the region.

Gauri Devi Bhatt and her son in their kitchen with her Rs 200 smoke-free improved stove that has reduced her daily workload to gather firewood and educed lung and eye infections.

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The next general election is up for grabs to anyone who can guarantee integrity, vision and good governance

At last it looks like the top leaders of the main parties have agreed to agree. In public, they all say they all want elections, but who knows what they really want?

All this week, while a task force was meeting in Kathmandu to iron out the details of the constitutional and logistical provisions for elections, the top leaders fanned out across the country addressing supporters and accusing each other of trying to sabotage elections. In a sense, the speeches were campaign-style tirades. The parties are already in campaign mode.

Whatever the outcome of the Supreme Court verdict on the writ petition challenging the legality of the U-Maoist proposal to make Chief Justice Khil Raj Regmi the head of an election government, the question is not ‘if’ there will be elections, but ‘when’. June is out of the question, even November is looking iffy given the hemming and hawing from party leaders, so May 2014 may be a safe bet.

But none of the parties want Regmi to be at the helm for too long. The Maoist-Madhesi coalition led the most corrupt government in Nepal’s democratic history, and they have amassed a commendable war-chest to finance an election win, but this ill-gotten hoard will deplete the longer they are out of power. The opposition is underfunded for polls, especially if it gets really dirty.

Whenever they decide to face voters, all parties will be desperate for a win, which makes it all the more important to have the mechanisms in place, the rules laid out and agreed, the laws passed. This is a formidable task, and renewing voter lists, demarcating constituencies that reflect new population densities, and requiring photo IDs for voters are questions with deep political ramifications. There is also a strong case to have local elections in June or November, preceding general elections.

But the first order of business is to have a whole Election Commission, and the easiest thing to do would be to re-commission commissioners who were retired earlier this year. Voter registration efforts need to go into top gear. Not only does it have to keep pace with population growth to include those who have grown up to voting age since 2008, women voters as well as those from excluded communities need to be given IDs. For this, all those eligible for citizenship should have citizenship papers. It is a gross violation of human rights to disenfranchise Nepalis currently stateless just because their Nepali fathers are missing. Provisions have to be made for absentee voting by the nearly 3 million Nepalis outside Nepal.

The integrity of the voting process itself needs to be ensured: minimising cheating, booth-capturing, vote-buying, intimidation, violations of the election code that were rampant in 2008. In their hurry to get the elections over and done with, international observers prematurely declared those polls free and fair. The Maoists would probably have won anyway, but by a much smaller margin had the voting been cleaner.

We can’t afford a flawed election this time, when the conditions are, if anything, more difficult. The Annual Himalmedia Public Opinion Poll that are conducted annually sampling more than 4,000 respondents all over the country shows this year that there is huge disillusionment with the political parties.

This year’s opinion poll results which will be carried on Sunday’s edition of Himal Khabarpatrika and next Friday’s issue of this newspaper indicate the popularity ratings of all political leaders have all fallen to the single digits and are too close to call. The proportion of those who either didn’t know or hadn’t decided has exceeded 40 per cent.
The next general elections is up for grabs to any political party that can show it has integrity, vision and the managerial skills to guarantee good governance — even a completely new party with fresh faces.

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