KATHMANDU (AFP) — A candidate preparing to contest landmark elections in Nepal was gunned down Tuesday in one of the most serious incidents yet of a bitter campaign marked by violence and intimidation.
The politician, a member of a prominent centre-left party, was pulled from his vehicle and shot by unidentified assassins in the west of the country, and died of his injuries in hospital, local police told AFP.
The attack came less than 36 hours before polls open on Thursday. The elections will lead to the formation of a body tasked with rewriting the Himalayan nation's constitution in the wake of a 2006 peace deal with Maoist rebels.
The new Constituent Assembly is also expected to end the unpopular reign of Nepal's King Gyanendra and abolish the 240-year-old monarchy.
The Maoists, who battled for a decade for a republic, have convinced other parties to ditch the king, although the issue remains divisive and is seen a major source of much of the pre-poll violence.
In the ethnically-tense south of the country near the border with India, King Gyanendra -- viewed by his supporters as a Hindu god -- still retains support. He is also believed to have high-placed backers in the national army.
It was not clear what was behind the assassination in Surkhet district, situated around 360 kilometres (230 miles) west of Kathmandu, local police officer Yogeshwor Khadka told AFP.
However, the Maoists have blamed the king and his supporters for a string of bombings, including two attacks on Monday that left over a dozen people injured.
"It's a last-ditch effort by royalists and Hindu fundamentalists to disrupt the constituent assembly elections," deputy Maoist commander Ananta said of the bombings.
But the Maoists have been singled out by the United Nations for criticism over their use of beatings and other forms of intimidation to win votes.
Although the rebels publicly renounced violence when they signed the peace deal, they have long been accused of mafia-like behaviour. The United States also continues to list them as a foreign "terrorist" organisation.
On Tuesday, the UN made a final appeal for calm.
"I would like to urge voters not to be influenced while they are voting, that this will be a secret election and no-one will know who they are voting for," said Ian Martin, the head of the UN monitoring mission in Nepal.
The polls, the climax of the 2006 peace deal, will be the most watched in Nepal's history -- with some 800 international observers in the country, including ex-US president Jimmy Carter and a 120-strong European Union team.
On Tuesday, Carter met Maoist leaders despite the "terrorist" tag, to press them for an end to intimidation.
Analysts say the biggest underlying question is whether the poll outcome gives the Maoists enough political clout to keep them within the democratic system.
The Maoists' transition from feared guerrilla outfit to mainstream party has not been smooth. Analysts say it is still a guess how well they will fare in polling for the 601-seat assembly.
The country's biggest parties, the centrist Nepali Congress and the leftist Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) -- which is communist in name only and was the party of the assassinated candidate -- are expected to grab the lion's share of seats.
King Gyanendra has been keeping a low profile ahead of the election.
He was never a popular ruler, having assumed the throne in 2001 after much-loved former king Birendra and most of the rest of the family were massacred by a drunk, drug-fuelled crown prince.
His survival of the palace massacre has led many Nepalis to believe he and his son -- hated for his playboy lifestyle in one of the world's poorest countries -- were somehow complicit. He lost even more support when he dismissed the government and assumed absolute power to fight the Maoists.
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