IMAGE VIA GOOGLE
On the streets of Kathmandu in early September, the energy was electric. Thousands of young Nepalis, brandishing smartphones and placards, demanded an end to the corruption and incompetence of the country’s political establishment. Their protests, organised online and fuelled by a generational rage, forced the prime minister, Khadga Prasad Oli, to announce his resignation. It appeared a tectonic shift was underway. Yet as Nepal approaches general elections in March, that same movement is in danger of collapsing. The instrument of its potential demise is not a brutal crackdown but proliferation.
The election commission is being inundated with new party registrations. More than 120 are already approved; dozens more await processing. The final tally will likely top 150. This explosion of choice, however, is not a sign of democratic health. In fact it is a case of fatal fragmentation. Many are paper parties, vanity projects with no ground-level organisation. Crucially, despite the protests being driven by Gen Z, not a single registered party is actually led by members of that generation. Their absence from the ballot means the youth vote has no coherent political vehicle. Their sheer number splinters the anti-establishment vote. In a first-past-the-post electoral system, where a small plurality can secure victory, this mathematical dilution is a gift to the three dominant parties—the UML (it has so far refused to participate in the elections, however), the Congress and the newly-formed Nepali Communist Party. They can now win seats notwithstanding widespread dissatisfaction, simply because their opposition is divided a hundred different ways.
The core weakness of the youthful uprising is the gap between protests and politics. Digital activism thrives on spontaneity and moral outrage. Winning elections means you need money, cadres and a meticulous ground game: the very assets the old parties have cultivated for decades. The new parties, by contrast, are built around personal brands (think of Harka Sampang’s new party, Shram Sanskriti Party) rather than credible reform plans. Their leaders may possess immense social-media credibility but lack the machinery to mobilise voters across Nepal’s difficult terrain. With the election on March 5th and the registration deadline on November 26th, the compressed timeline exacerbates this disadvantage. Established parties simply reload their existing networks; new ones must build from nothing in a matter of months.
Further muddying the waters is the emergence of parallel youth initiatives. Campaigns for national unification, led by figures such as Sudan Gurung, run alongside the myriad new parties. Though well-intentioned, they create competing platforms that split focus and confuse voters. The singular, powerful narrative that defined the protests—anger at Mr Oli and his peers—has been lost in a cacophony of slogans. This loss of clarity diminishes media attention and saps the movement’s symbolic power. Voters recognise anger less easily when it is scattered across a hundred different banners.
There is also a whiff of deliberate sabotage. Some new registrations appear designed not to challenge the establishment but rather to protect it. Parties with suspiciously familiar names or leaders with past ties to traditional parties may be engineered to confuse voters and clog the ballot. This tactic, known as “ballot clogging”, allows old elites to reconstitute their power under the cover of democratic choice. The interim government is powerless to prevent such manoeuvres without undermining the very democratic principles the protesters champion.
This presents a painful tension. The openness of the system, which the movement sought to defend, is now the mechanism of its potential undoing. The old guard, adept at the gritty realities of political survival, understands that a fragmented field is a manageable one. Young leaders meanwhile overestimate the electoral value of moral authority and digital reach alone. With no Gen Z-led party on the ballot, the movement’s energy has no direct channel into elections. Without rapid, strategic consolidation into a few credible political vehicles, the movement’s impressive energy will dissipate. It may burn bright in the history of Nepal’s protests, but flicker out in its election results. The lesson is as old as politics itself: it is easier to storm the streets than to storm the ballot box. ■