By Gopal Sharma
KATHMANDU, Jan 9 (Reuters) - Nepal's chief election commissioner said on Monday that long-delayed municipal elections set for February would not be postponed despite a threat from Maoist rebels to disrupt polling.
Keshav Raj Rajbhandari said filing of nominations for thousands of positions on 58 municipal councils in towns and cities across the Himalayan nation would begin on January 26, with voting to be held in all constituencies on February 8.
Only 1.9 million out of Nepal's 26 million people are eligible to vote in the municipal polls.
The anti-monarchy Maoists, who have been fighting for a decade to turn Nepal into a communist state, have threatened to take "special action" against election officials or candidates.
In the past, the rebels have kidnapped, beaten or killed those who disobey them.
In his first comments since the Maoists ended a four-month unilateral ceasefire last week, Rajbhandari said voters would be safe despite the rebels' threat to focus their attacks on the elections.
"We have discussed this (security) with the government. And they have assured us that the security will be managed so that the elections are held safely," Rajbhandari told Reuters in his heavily guarded office in the heart of the capital, Kathmandu.
"If elections can be held during the conflict in Iraq, Afghanistan ... why can't (we hold them) here?" he asked.
King Gyanendra, who fired the government and seized power in February last year promising to crush the insurgency, had promised municipal polls by April this year.
But analysts doubted whether any vote could be either secure or fair, and at least six people have been killed and more than a dozen wounded in a string of attacks since the rebels ended their truce on Jan 2.
"The security situation has not improved since the king took power last year vowing to crush the Maoists," said Prateek Pradhan, editor of the Kathmandu Post daily.
"Holding elections at this point would only serve to consolidate the king's regime," he said.
OPPOSITION BOYCOTT
Nepal's seven major political parties have pledged to boycott the polls saying they were aimed at legitimising the anti-democratic regime of King Gyanendra.
The parties have pledged to urge voters to stay away and set up human pickets to stop them from going to polling centres.
They want the king to delay the polls, hand power back to an all-party government and begin peace talks with the Maoists.
The seven parties held more than 190 seats in the 205-member parliament dissolved in 2002.
But Rajbhandari said the parties must participate in the elections and help put democracy back on the track.
He said that after the municipal polls, preparations would begin for parliamentary elections to be held by April next year and then for village assemblies.
The Maoist revolt has shattered an economy dependent on international aid and tourism and has delayed all elections in Nepal, wedged between between Asian giants, China and India, since 2002.
But Rajbhandari called on voters to send a defiant message to the rebels that the conflict in which more than 12,500 people have died since 1996 would not be allowed to hijack the country's democracy.
"We want to show that there is democracy in Nepal. Therefore, each and every person should come and vote," the softly spoken Rajbhandari, a retired bureaucrat, said.