IMAGE: KHABARHUB
NEPAL HAS waited 35 years for a stable majority government. In those three and a half decades, the country burned through 27 prime ministers and watched coalitions collapse mid-budget. When Balendra Shah, known as Balen, led the Rastriya Swatantra Party to a near two-thirds majority in March, the relief was audible. Here, finally, was a government with the numbers to govern. Seven weeks in, it is squandering the opportunity in a way that has become peculiarly personal.
On May 11th president Ram Chandra Paudel addressed a joint session of parliament to present the government’s policy and programme for fiscal year 2026-27—a constitutionally mandated ceremony equivalent to a state opening. Shah attended in informal clothes, without the Nepali topi that protocol expects, then walked out before the president had finished speaking. His secretariat offered no explanation. He had not yet paid a courtesy call on the president since taking office in late March. Three days later, with the House expecting the prime minister to table the proposal initiating debate on his own government’s agenda, Shah sent his finance minister Swarnim Wagle in his place and watched the proceedings on a live broadcast from his Singha Durbar office, according to sources cited by Khabarhub, a local news outlet. His official vehicle sat in the car park all day. The House was adjourned twice, then shut down entirely by 5:30pm.
The opposition’s fury carries a painful irony. Bhishmaraj Angdembe, parliamentary party leader of the Nepali Congress—reduced to 38 seats and still adjusting to irrelevance—called Shah’s conduct “an attack on democracy and republicanism”. From a party that spent years paralysing parliament through obstruction, the complaint has the flavour of a pickpocket complaining about theft.
Yet the constitutional experts making the same argument carry more weight. “If the prime minister does not have to come to parliament, does not have to be accountable to parliament, then what is the meaning of being in that position?” asked Sudhir Acharya, a senior advocate, in an interview with Ratopati, another local outlet.
The House of Representatives Rules do technically permit a designated minister to respond in the prime minister’s absence—but only in cases of illness or circumstances beyond control, language the RSP’s chief whip, Kabindra Burlakoti, conspicuously declined to invoke when defending the practice.
What makes the drama cut deeper than surfacial sparring is the contrast with Shah’s own campaign. The RSP ran on accountability. Its manifesto demanded an end to the cosy habits of the old parties, which once treated parliament as a venue for horse-trading rather than governance. The RSP itself, during the previous House, had loudly demanded that prime ministers face questions in person.
Gyan Bahadur (Gyanendra) Shahi of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party—now in opposition—recalled this during the May 13th standoff. “The prime minister is sitting in Singha Durbar wearing dark glasses while we are in parliament demanding answers,” he said. Routine of Nepal Banda, a social media platform considered close to Shah, had actually posted that morning that he would attend. He did not.
The governing style that has emerged over Shah’s first seven weeks is being described, not without admiration in some quarters, as “presidentialised”. He has visited the RSP’s central office twice since joining the party. He concentrated Defence, Home Affairs, and Science and Technology under his own oversight from the start. He communicates primarily through action—anti-corruption raids, administrative reshuffles, the Property Investigation Commission probing two decades of NRB governance rather than through speech or engagement.
His supporters argue this is intentional efficiency, rather than evasion. An early supporter quoted in the Annapurna Express described it approvingly: he is communicating more through actions than rhetoric.
But Nepal’s system is parliamentary not presidential. That matters. Executive authority flows from parliamentary confidence, and parliamentary confidence is maintained through scrutiny. A presidential system provides its own accountability mechanisms—fixed terms, separation of powers, direct mandates. A parliamentary system that operates like a presidency, with the executive answering only when convenient, acquires neither the discipline of the one nor the responsiveness of the other.
The RSP’s own backbenchers are starting to notice. An RSP lawmaker cited by Khabarhub warned that if Shah did not reform his approach, “the party may be forced to think about alternatives.” Former prime minister Baburam Bhattarai issued a public warning that failing to remain accountable to parliament “amounts to disrespect towards both lawmakers and citizens”. Shah has not spoken in parliament since taking the oath of office. The budget—due on May 29th—will provide the next test of whether that silence continues.
The tragedy of the situation is not that Nepal’s reformist prime minister is lazy or corrupt. He may well be neither. The Property Investigation Commission, the administrative restructuring, the crackdown on political appointments across state institutions: these are substantive acts by a government with real reform intent.
But reform without accountability is governance by fiat. And governance by fiat, however well-intentioned, has a tendency in Nepal to end the way the last several governments ended: abruptly, and in acrimony.
Gagan Kumar Thapa, now the Nepali Congress president (who lost his own parliamentary seat in March), said it plainly at a recent party gathering in Pokhara: individuals proven guilty must face the law, but “arbitrary crackdowns on businesses based on whims and impulses” could seriously harm the economy. The same philosophy applies to parliamentary conventions. Breaking a norm because it suits you today is what the old parties did. It is what Balen Shah promised he would not. ■
