Maoists win Nepal elections

Nepal’s Maoists were confirmed winners of this month’s landmark elections in the impoverished nation after vote counting was completed, officials said Thursday.

The Election Commission on Wednesday completed the vote counting for the whole country under the proportional representation (PR) electoral system. According to a preliminary report, the CPN-Maoist, with 29.28 percent (3,144,204 votes), has secured the highest percentage of the total 10,739,099 votes counted so far. Nepali Congress and CPN-UML have bagged 21.14 and 20.33 percent (2,269,893 and 2,183,370) respectively, whereas the Madhesi People’s Rights Forum and Tarai-Madhes Democratic Party have secured 6.32 percent and 3.16 percent (678,327 and 338,93) of the vote respectively.

Depending upon the votes received by the different political parties the EC allocates 335 constituent assembly seats under the PR system through the modified Sainte Lague method.

The ultra-leftists have won a total of 217 seats in the new 601-member constituent assembly, whose first job will be to abolish the 240-year-old monarchy. Nearest rivals the Nepali Congress have won just 107 seats, election officials also said.
The April 10 elections were a central strand of a 2006 historic peace deal the Maoists signed with mainstream parties that ended their decade-long insurgency that killed at least 13,000 people.

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