Election of the Day: Nepal

On Thursday, Nepal will elect a new Pratinidhi Sabha, or House of Representatives. Under the new constitution of 2015, there are 275 seats, 165 single member district first past the post, and 110 seats allocated via national party list proportional representation. Like Japan and Thailand, the two elections are separate; voters choose a party list and vote for a candidate for the constituency. There is a 3% threshold requirement for PR seats.

This election was called early in response to last year’s “Gen Z Protests.” The initial cause of this uprising was a proposed ban on a number of popular social media platforms, but they quickly extended into a broader anti-system, anti-corruption protests led by students and young people. The official rationale was that these companies did not register with the government and submit to a regulatory and taxation regime. But there was a broad suspicion that the government wanted to shut down social media because they saw it as a source of potential unrest. The “Nepo babies” of Nepal but their privileged lives on display, and were widely followed, making viscerally clear the kinds of opportunities and lifestyles these young adults have, and the aching gap between their lives and the lives of ordinary Nepalis. There was also a widespread fear that cutting off Nepalis from social media would severe their ties to the diaspora. Nepal sits near the top of the “remittances as share of GDP” list, with somewhere between 25-35% of GDP coming from remittances. (Only Tajikistan, and possibly Lebanon and Samoa, rank higher.) Severing a primary social tie to faraway relatives, the theory went, threatened people’s livelihoods in a country where conventional opportunities for gainful, remunerative employment are poor.

The protests, and the government response, turned violent; a common reported death toll is 76, including 3 police officers and 10 prisoners shot trying to escape. The national parliament building was set on fire. But in concrete the protests were a stunning success; over the course of just five days they forced the resignation of the Prime Minister, K.P. Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal, and several other cabinet ministers. When it came time to appoint an interim Prime Minister, the Nepalese military leaders selected the person the student movement, Hami Nepal, demanded (Sushila Karki, a former Supreme Court justice). Given how smoothly the last 6 months have gone, they appear to have made a wise choice. 45 of the deceased, including protestors and police, were formally declared martyrs in January.

So what will the post-uprising government look like? There doesn’t appear to be any polling, but two parties that people who seem to expect to perform well are Rastriya Swatantra, or National Independence party. The fourth largest party, with 11% of the PR vote and 20 seats in the 2022 election, it is variously described as Centrist, economically liberal, “constitutional socialism”, market socialism, progressivism, and pragmatism. For this election they convinced the independent mayor of Katmandu (a popular young figure who is perceived as pro-uprising) to resign as mayor to lead the party. He will contest former PM Oli’s district. They are running on some constitutional reforms, including full PR and bureaucratic streamlining measures. They appear best positioned to capture the energy of the protests. The other party that looks well positioned to do well is Nepali Congress, a social democratic party that was heavily (although informally) influenced by the Congress Party of their southern neighbor. This has long been one of the larger parties in Nepal and the largest voter-getter in the 2022 election.

The Communist Party of Nepal’s performance is worth watching, as they are trying to shake of the stink of the disgraced government they lead (both Congress and Rastriya Swatantra were members of the coalition, although the latter appears to have had an on-again, off-again relationship to the Oli led government). There are many other parties contesting this election, but a number of the left wing parties appear to have united under the umbrella of the Nepali Communist Party (not to be confused with the Communist Party of Nepal!). For those who track such things, they identify as MLM (Marxist-Leninist-Maoist) while the CPN is just ML. In practice the manifestos are very similar and, from what I can gather, broadly social democratic. The only genuinely conservative party of consequence is the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, a Hindu nationalist and Royalist party that is unlikely to win enough seats to matter much. Why Hindu nationalism is such a minor force in Nepal, relative to India (both are around 80% Hindu countries) is a question I have no answers for; I welcome your theories.

A few months ago, there was a great deal of uncertainty about this election, as the CPN and Congress, generally the two largest parties in Nepali politics, were threatening to boycott the election:

The uncertainty had stemmed from the fact that big sections in major parties like the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), the first and second biggest parties in the dissolved parliament, were threatening not to take part in the polls. They said they felt insecure in an atmosphere characterized by intimidation of old parties following the violent Gen Z revolt in early September. The protests brought down the K.P. Sharma Oli government and were, in general, targeted against the old political establishment. These old parties also feared that if they contested elections so soon after the Gen Z revolt, they could be trounced.

On the other hand, the newer forces that took ownership of the Gen Z movement, or emerged after it, were also uncertain about taking on the old, more established parties. With elections just months away, outfits like the Ujjyalo Nepal Party, the Shram Sanskriti Party, and the Gatisheel Loktantraik Party felt they didn’t have enough time to drum up public support, especially without the organizational strength of the NC or the CPN-UML.

Credit must therefore go to the interim Sushila Karki government for taking all these forces into confidence and putting the country on the path of timely elections — and the contests therein will be fascinating.

The main mandate of the Gen Z uprising was the ouster of the old political leaders, and for clean and effective governance. Many of the old leaders stand discredited amid a clamor for new faces in politics. So younger people have entered the electoral fray, making it a contest between the old and the new.

Nothing better epitomizes this generational polarization than the highly-anticipated contest between Oli — the 73-year-old CPN-UML chair who was prime minister during the time of the Gen Z uprising — and Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old mayor of Kathmandu, who was the de facto leader of the uprising. The two are going head-to-head in a constituency in eastern Nepal that has traditionally been an Oli stronghold.

If Oli loses, it would be a statement win for Shah. By entering his den and beating Oli, Shah wants to establish himself as the undisputed prime minister candidate. On the other hand, if the old political fox is able to outmaneuver Shah, Oli’s waning political fortunes could swiftly revive.

There are similar “old versus new” contests happening all over the country. Even though the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) seems to have wind in its sails following Shah’s entry into the party, it is hard to make any kind of predictions about poll results. One thing is for certain, though: It will be difficult for any party to get an absolute majority given Nepal’s mixed electoral system. So the next parliament is also likely to be a divided house.

Exciting stuff. We’ll find out what the new parliament looks like soon enough.