IMAGE: RSP
FOUR AND A HALF months after Prime Minister Balendra Shah took office, his government finds itself facing mounting criticism over its style of governance, with everyone from opponents and constitutional experts to political analysts accusing it of sidelining democratic institutions while pursuing rapid reforms. A government elected on an unprecedented mandate to clean up Nepali politics has, in its first 130 days, demonstrated a persistent confusion between the kind of authority a popular street movement confers and the kind that a parliamentary democracy requires.
Shah insists he is a man of “action, not words.” With him repeatedly refusing to speak in parliament, even when it was mandatory to do so under parliamentary rules, pressure had been steadily building on the government and the ruling RSP to correct the anomaly. When Shah did finally break his silence, on May 29th, two full months after assuming office, instead of appeasing the opposition his maiden parliamentary speech sparked a firestorm. He disclosed ongoing territorial negotiations with India over Kalapani; a statement that generated days of diplomatic controversy and required clarification from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The first time he spoke in parliament, he created a foreign policy crisis he then had to walk back. The instinct to bypass institutional process and communicate directly (through Facebook posts, through action, through unilateral announcements) was formed during the mayoral years in Kathmandu, where the political theatre of “action not words” worked because a mayor can bulldoze an encroachment without tabling a bill. A prime minister cannot govern that way without creating the kind of damage that outlasts the original problem.
The government has increasingly relied on social media to communicate major policy decisions, often creating confusion over official processes. The prime minister’s Facebook posts have regularly featured policy announcements as well as political commentary (and responses to controversies). The health and education levy was reversed by Facebook post in July before the legal mechanism to formally amend the Finance Act had been established. The reversal may have been the right call; the method showed a government that announces outcomes before it knows how to deliver them legally. Constitutional lawyers are still debating whether the reversal has been formally implemented or merely proclaimed.
The government faces criticism for executive overreach, reliance on ordinances, and challenges to federalism, provoking questions about whether it will deliver durable democratic renewal or shift toward more centralised governance.
Despite having close to a two-thirds majority in parliament, the Shah government has faced criticism for increasingly relying on ordinances and centralised decision-making instead of legislative processes. The Cabinet recommended eight ordinances to President Paudel within weeks of a parliamentary session being prorogued. Last month Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists released a joint statement cautioning against the Shah government’s interference in Nepal’s judiciary. Three of the world’s largest human rights organisations issuing a joint statement about a government that is four and a half months old is not a petty occurrence.
RSP lawmakers themselves have begun openly criticising the Balendra Shah-led government as it completes its first 100 days. RSP lawmaker Jagadish Kharel warned in parliament that the government could not rely solely on the prime minister’s popularity and that the dignity and role of lawmakers also needed to be respected. “Is our role as MPs limited to sitting here and thumping desks?” Kharel said. When a government’s own parliamentary members are asking whether they have any role beyond applauding, the centralisation problem has become seen to the people who are supposed to benefit from the majority.
What makes this rather than just a catalogue of rookie mistakes is the trouble it reveals. On April 9th Labour Minister Deepak Sah was sacked following allegations that he had used his office to facilitate the continuation of his wife on the Health Insurance Board. The minister was gone within weeks; the RSP’s own disciplinary commission moved quickly. That is a welcome institutional reflex that the old parties never demonstrated. The corruption arrests of April (Bhatta, Agrawal, Golchha) represent accountability of a kind Nepal has not seen before. The tiger census in July demonstrated that sustained state capacity exists. These are not nothing.
The RSP government’s norm-breaking has sometimes been well-intentioned and welcome. But speed without care risks turning reform into damage. The blunt version is simpler: a government of 35-year-olds built on disruption has discovered that governing means building the institutions it once disrupted. Disruption is not governance. The learning curve is steep; the mandate is still intact. What matters now is what this government learns before it discovers what it has broken. ■
