KATHMANDU: Nepal will hold its first local elections in two decades in May, the government has announced, a key moment in the country’s fraught transition to democracy. But deep political divides have prevented it from implementing a new constitution that paves the way for elections, but which the minority Madhesi community says leaves them politically marginalized. “This is an achievement in a way but the problem is whether the Madhesi parties will be on board. If the Madhesi go for protest it will be impossible (to hold the polls),” Nishchal Pandey, director of the Kathmandu-based Centre for South Asian Studies, told Agence France-Presse. Their five-year terms expired in 2002, at the height of the civil war, and their mandate was allowed to lapse.

Source: Manila Times February 21, 2017 09:25 UTC