Nepal’s election may at last bring stability

THE people of Nepal are said to be a stoical lot. But fatalism is not the only reason for the Himalayan republic’s palpable lack of excitement on the eve of what ought to be a historic election. The vote, to be held in two stages on November 26th and December 7th, is for both a new national legislature and new state governments, under a crisp new constitution. It follows nearly three decades of what C.K. Lal, an acerbic columnist, describes as “history on steroids”, during which Nepal’s 29m people endured a ten-year armed insurgency that left some 18,000 dead, a machine-gun rampage by an angry prince who slaughtered nearly the entire royal family, a revolving door of governments under 25 different prime ministers, including spells of arch-conservative dictatorship and of rule by Maoist guerrillas, the abolition of the 240-year-old monarchy, a massively destructive earthquake, devastating floods and a ruinous economic blockade.