After this years ANA at Baltimore, the Boston saga is slowly being forgotten. The public has a short attention span and in fact are tired of hearing about the Boston screw up.

Everyone is watching the upcoming ANA elections to be held this week. Due to the bad publicity received by the ANA every year, most people seem to be watching from the sidelines. The ones who are getting involved are the ones who have aspirations of holding the new elected office.

In the past, elections used to happen inside closed doors but this year it's taking a whole new turn. It is not 100% clear how the actual voting will take place and how credible the voting system is. The election committee needs to clarify how the whole process works and how they have placed checks and balance in the system so that there is no screw up. Who is to guarantee that the IT person behind the voting related software is not going to skew the results to his likings?

No matter how much this years election is being touted as democratic, until and unless a clear procedural documentation is provided by the ANA with regards to this democratic election, the election will still remain a typical playground of a few.

Getting onto the candidates, there is clearly a divide between the two groups who have identified themselves.

ANA Election Candidates

TEAM UNO

REVITALIZING ANA TEAM

President Dhiren Gurung, TX Senior Vice President : Mr. Robin Thapa, NH Vice President : Mr. Karma Tenzing, NY General Secretary : Mr. Bijay Thapa, VA Secretary : Miss Shradda Regmi, MN Treasurer : Mr. NavaRaj Shrestha, CO Deputy Treasurer : Mr. Bishnu Mani Acharya, MA Information Director : Mr. Nischal Shrestha, OH Member at Large : Mr. Bibeck Basnet (aka DJ Harkay), MD Member at Large : Mr. Pravin Shrestha, MA Member at Large : Mr. Kailash Thapa, MN  If you want to know more about “UNO” Team ANA, Please visit our website www.dhirengurung.com.

President Mr. H.B Bhandari, Baltimore, MD   Senior Vice-President Mr. Dhurba Ghimire, Boston, MA Vice-President Mr. Lok Chhantyal, Harrisburg, PA   General Secretary Mr. Sundar Karmacharya ,Lewisville, TX   Secretary Mr. Manmohan Singh Ghimire, New York, NY   Treasurer Dr. Anup Srivastab, California, CA   Deputy Treasurer Mr. Shiva Bista , Towson, MD   Information Director Mr. Ramesh Lamichhane, Dover, PA   Member Mr. Arjun B. Hamal , Nottingham MD   Member Mr. Binaya Aryal, Falls Church, VA   Member at Large Ms. Sita Pandey, Gaithersburg, MD       Thanks Revitalizing ANA TEAM http://revitalizingana.com/

Team UNO:
Most members of this team came out of the Facebook group which called for boycotting ANA ironically. The members are young and energetic. Their focus will mainly be sports, partying and catering mostly to the young crowd. Why they chose a spanish word UNO is not clear. Team EK would sounded much better in my opinion.

Revitalizing Team:
Most members of this team have been involved with Nepali organizations for many years. They have experience but would they continue the same old staleness at the ANA is a good question. Their focus would be more spread out such as Cultural programs, Literature, Nepalese cuisine, in addition to sports and parties.

In my opinion both teams would be an interesting choice but as far as voting goes, it seems like the voters will chose who gets elected to each position so the final team will be a mix of both teams which will keep a good balance between the modern young Nepalese and the more traditionally and culturally inclined.

The modern vs cultural divide is becoming more significant and clearer as the Nepali diaspora grows within the US. On one group are the students who were raised in the US or came to the US for their undergraduate degree and now have become more in tune with the US culture while still retaining the connection to the Nepal. The other group being more recent immigrants who have come to the US in later part of their life or growing up in a more traditional environment in a Nepali household in US. How they will be catered to during the next convention will depend on the upcoming election.

It's a great thing for the ANA to have two competitive groups vying for it's leadership. Competitive elections serve the community well because they prevent candidates from taking their voters for granted and becoming too arrogant, aloof or disconnected from the people they seek to serve.

I  can only hope the executive committee that gets elected includes a combination of people from both panels. When combined these two groups broadly represent the socio-economic, ethnic, educational, gender, age diversity that exists in the Nepali community in the US  which one group on it's own may not necessarily be able to provide.

May the best man (or woman) win.

no more dohori nights please

UNO??????? EK much better. Agreed..........hopefully the young energy wont turn ANA into Gunda Gardi Team. I would like to see more female participation for sure, but with guys, gotta be more careful, they tend to be more into hoool danga and partying, just an observation, may be a biased one? I am sorry if I sound biased. I hope there will be young gentleman type youths running here, I am tired of seeing young reckless drunkard party animals with big mouth babbling non-sense..girls are diffferent though--nepalis girls are much better than their young counterparts.

So, the other dark horse third party candidates have next to no chance of winning then?

Rumour has it the election has been postponed due to internal politics.

What do the candidates have to say about this?