Election Day

So election day finally arrived. This is the day everyone has been talking about since 2006 started. This is the day that caused the Maosists to call a 7 day national Bandh (meaning no traffic on the roads, no shops open, no restaurants running) for the 3 days before and the 3 days after the elections. The seven parties boycotted it. The Maoists killed candidates. Stories of people being coerced into being candidates and then backing out the next day have been filling the papers every day for the past fortnight. The only candidate who didn't back out in the town of Pokhara was a dog. This was also the first national elections in 7 years in Nepal and according to most of my Nepali friends, it was a total farce. But the king and the government stuck to it and yesterday it happened. Honestly, I am not sure how it all went, having poisoned myself with my own cooking (go G! and her first attempt at using her kitchen) I spent most of Wednesday running between the toilet and my bed. But when I did step out gingerly into the streets and hobble my way to my colleagues house for lunch, I think I passed a polling booth. I only know this because I ducked into a street and among the kids skipping and singing and playing cricket there were about 16 heavily armed soldier guys. Not a voter in sight though. I heard today that turn out was around 20%, although in some municipalities no one came out to vote and there are rumours of between 2 - 6 protestors being shot. People are already predicting what will happen next, they say the numbers who supposedly came out to vote will miraculously jump up, the election will be called a success, the king's first year of autocratic rule (he took power last February 1 and said he needed 3 years of autocratic rule to bring democracy and peace back to the country) will be legitimised and the people of Nepal who are caught up in all of this and who have lost a week of wages because of the Bandh will go back to work wondering what the point of it all was. I wonder where the international election monitors were....at least we made it on to the BBC.