CA Elections & Business Community
While the preparations for the Constituent Assembly elections scheduled for November 22 is gaining momentum, the business community with its own agenda must gear itself to influence the election.
Objective: The objective of the business community is, no doubt, a Constitution that ensures the sanctity of private property, honour to profit, freedom to pursue prosperity and respect to entrepreneurship. Such a Constitution will be a reality only when the Constituent Assembly has a big majority of members who believe in such ideas. These members should be able to convince the rest of the people in the Assembly, as well as outside, that the agenda that they have been advocating is the most judicious one and deserves the national support.
Actions : The business community should, therefore, start a campaign immediately to ensure that the right candidates are fielded for the election. For this purpose, they should start lobbying political parties, explain them the ideas and convince them to draft their election manifesto accordingly. They may have to give second priority right now to their immediate business concerns such as revising the rates of tax and subsidies by a fraction of percentage point here and there. The major focus should be on canvassing for the election.
And the act of canvassing should not be limited to the political parties. The business community should educate their employees as well. (Anyway, the workers are not going to work till the elections.) For this purpose, they can send either their workers or a delegation of them, to visit a number of countries such as China or Switzerland or Vietnam. The money spent on this is surely going to yield unimaginable returns. Believe us, they will return so much enlightened that the nonsense that has been increasing recently in the name of employees’ rights and unionizing will surely reduce to almost zero.
The canvassing has to be not only for fielding the right candidates and educating the workers but also for ensuring that the elections should be held on the scheduled date–November 22, not to postpone further. They must not forget that the failure to hold the election in June has already cost them a lot. That postponement has only lengthened the time of uncertainty to the detriment of many businesses. Just look at the tourism industry that is showing strong signs of revival. But the bookings for hotels and tour programmes for November the peak season for Nepali tourism industry, are being cancelled. Therefore, postponing the elections again will be highly costly affair.
Funding political parties: An important issue confronting the business houses is the accounting of the funds they donate to the political parties and individuals. Our advice is that the business community should liberally fund the political parties that give written promise to carry out the business community’s agenda. Perhaps it is not going to be so easy if the funding is done separately by individual firms. The business associations should collect the money and offer it to those parties that agree to business agenda. This enhances the bargaining power of the community. Such buying of the political power is perfectly ethical as long as it is done transparently. It is time to set new standards of morality. And what is more moral than transparency?
