Months after disbanding the parliament and initializing a state of emergency, the king of Nepal has promised elections. This is the part where we all laugh and snicker.

Nepal’s royalist administration has repeated its commitment to restoring democracy in the country. But the announcement has been met with skepticism in Kathmandu.

Nepalese Foreign Minister Ramesh Nath Pandey has told the United Nations General Assembly that King Gyanendra’s commitment to multiparty democracy is “unflinching and total”. Mr. Pandey reiterated the King’s promise to hold municipal polls by April next year, and parliamentary elections within two years.

But the announcement brought little hope to Kathmandu, where political parties and civil activists have been stepping up pressure for the restoration of an elected government more quickly.

Yuvraj Ghimre, editor of Nepal’s “Samay” magazine, says political parties say that holding elections for local bodies will be a meaningless exercise.

“Political parties are not willing to believe in that because you hold municipal elections, but there is no government that is accountable to parliament, so there will be a contradiction: Who will these municipal bodies be accountable to? Also, the political parties are wanting more than just holding municipal elections, so there is still kind of stalemate,” he explained.

Remember, the reason the king said he disbanded the parliament was because of the Maoist insurgency — something he has yet to quell. The Maoists control significant portions of the country, so those areas are out of the question, and municipal elections in any case will be easy to rig. The thing is, Nepal already has a democratically elected parliament that has legitimacy with people. Chances are, given the lack of faith in the government right now, people won’t believe in whoever the newly ÄsÅelected leaders are. Adequate security and monitoring would be impossible.

Protests have been flaring ever since the king suspended parliament, but never before have they been so intense. They’ve been raging for the past couple of weeks especially, so much so that the king himself stayed away from the United Nations general assembly meeting, perhaps fearing that the government may be overthrown during his absence. The king doesn’t need to hold new elections just to put in a puppet parliament, he needs to reinstate the real one. Reinstating democracy isn’t as simple as holding elections, and certainly the king can’t be measured in good faith according by his actions, as he actively undermines the institutions already in place.