On the eve of election, violence continues in Nepal

KATHMANDU, Nepal - An outburst of bloodshed that left eight people dead yesterday has cast a shadow on today's election, an event that is hoped will cement Nepal's peace deal with communist insurgents.

The vote for a new assembly is intended to usher in sweeping changes for long-troubled Nepal and is likely to mean the end of a centuries-old royal dynasty.

But with one candidate gunned down, a protester shot dead by police, and six former rebels slain in a clash with police, it was clear that fashioning a lasting peace in the largely impoverished, often ill-governed and frequently violent Himalayan country won't be easy.

"For the peace process to be successful, the election needs to be credible," said Yubaraj Ghimire, editor of the newsweekly Samay. This week's violence "raises a lot of questions about how credible the election will be."

The protester was killed yesterday after police fired on a mob busy smashing shops and vandalizing buses to protest Tuesday's slaying of a candidate in the Surkhet district, according to the area's police chief, Ram Kumar Khanal. Police had no suspects in the candidate's slaying, he said.

A curfew was imposed in the remote district, and authorities said they would delay voting in the area by at least a week while the election would go on elsewhere.

Dozens of parties, from centrist democrats to former Maoist rebels to old-school royalists, competed for seats in a new Constituent Assembly, which will govern Nepal and rewrite its constitution.

The vote is the first in the two years since King Gyanendra was forced to end his royal dictatorship and the Maoist movement gave up its decade-long fight for a communist state that left about 13,000 people dead.

For the 27 million people of Nepal, wedged between India and China, the vote brings a promise of peace and an economic revival in this grindingly poor land that often more resembles a medieval fiefdom than a modern state.