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In the modest, wood-paneled office from which he now operates, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, until recently Nepal’s prime minister, is holding forth on constitutional propriety. The basso profundo voice, a staple of his political career, rumbles with indignation. The current interim government, he says, is an “unconstitutional farce”. The election it plans for March is a “drama”. His party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), or UML, will have none of it. The only legitimate course, Mr Oli insists, is to reinstate the House of Representatives.
The bluster makes perfect sense. Inside the Department of Money Laundering Investigation, forensic accountants are piecing together the financial histories of the country’s most enduring political dynasties. They have a busy few months ahead. The department is investigating three former prime ministers—Sher Bahadur Deuba, Mr Oli and Pushpa Kamal Dahal—along with several of their relatives and allies. The evidence includes sacks of charred rupee notes recovered from the ashes of houses torched by young protesters. For a country long inured to corruption, this is novel. For the first time, the hunters, not the hunted, are setting the agenda.
Also read: The ignominious fall of K.P. Sharma Oli
The investigations are the most tangible outcome of two seismic days in September, when a Gen Z-led uprising over corruption and misrule shook Nepal to its foundations. The protests, which left over 70 dead, forced the resignation of Mr Oli, the dissolution of the House of Representatives and the installation of an interim government under Sushila Karki, a former chief justice. Her sole mandate is to deliver a free and fair election by March 5th next year.
That is a tall order, given that Mr Oli, who headed the second largest party in the dissolved parliament, is doing its utmost to ensure the vote never happens. His reasoning is as audacious as it is self-serving. He claims that over 1,200 police firearms and 100,000 rounds of ammunition looted during the unrest are now in criminal hands, alongside 5,000 escaped prisoners. Holding an election under such conditions, he says, is impossible. Yet the security services say they are prepared.
Mr Oli’s real calculus then is different. His party’s credibility is shattered; its youth wing was a primary target of the protesters’ rage. A poll under the current anti-incumbent mood would be a bloodbath for the UML. Reinstating the old House, by contrast, would restore his platform and his path back to power. It is a brazen attempt to use the chaos his government presided over as a pretext to resurrect the system that caused it.
The strategy has plunged his own party into crisis. Senior figures, including Pradeep Kumar Gyawali, fret that a boycott is political suicide, ceding the field to rivals. They privately say that the party should participate in the election and conduct an internal review. The trouble, though, is that Mr Oli will hear none of it. He is betting that without the UML, the election will lack legitimacy, and that the Supreme Court—which begins hearing petitions to reinstate the parliament on October 29th—will side with him. It is a high-stakes wager. If the court agrees, it would effectively nullify the Gen Z movement and plunge the country into a constitutional crisis. If the court rejects Mr Oli’s gambit, his party may lose its influence and fade into political obscurity, or so the argument runs.
The interim government for its part ploughs on. Ms Karki is preparing voter rolls as well as engaging international observers and pledging a peaceful transfer of power. But the political ground is shifting beneath her feet. The Gen Z movement that brought her to power is already fragmenting. Its leaders, such as Miraj Dhungana, are forming their own political party but have set two non-negotiable conditions for their participation: a directly elected executive president and voting rights for the Nepali diaspora. The first demand, a reaction to the chronic instability of the parliamentary system, is a political grenade. It is passionately debated in tea shops and on social media, but is constitutionally impossible to implement before the March election.
This is the essence of Nepal’s impasse. A youth movement has successfully burnt down the old political house, but still cannot agree on the blueprint for a new one. The interim government is trying to rebuild on the scorched earth, but without the country’s major political party. And the ousted strongman, Mr Oli, is threatening to collapse the entire construction site unless he is given back the keys. After all, a pliable parliament he can bend to his will is a far safer bet than the unpredictable verdict of a furious public. ■
