Dairy farmers have been dumping milk on the streets because they are owed Rs6 billion by buyers. Victims of loan sharks and cooperatives have stormed Parliament.
And that was just this week. Nepalis are increasingly exasperated with a government formed just a year-and-a-half ago, and with three more years to go for the next elections.
The problem stems from the third largest party, the Maoist Centre, having the prime ministerial and other powerful posts in government. The Nepali Congress (NC), the biggest party by far in Parliament, is behaving like a minor partner.
Last week, there were vociferous demands at the NC General Committee meeting to abandon the coalition in the next election, and this week the Maoist standing committee also decided to go it alone in the 2027 election.
While both parties say they will not leave the current coalition, it is clear that the alliance is fraying at the seams.
“The Maoists and Congress threatening to contest elections independently is more an election strategy than a signal that the coalition is falling apart,” says analyst Indra Adhikari.
She adds, “It was more a reassurance to party members at a time of dissatisfaction and uncertainty within parties. Forming electoral alliances and forming coalitions are different matters.”
The current coalition of erstwhile extreme Communists with a centre-right Congress could not be more ideologically different. It was cobbled together after the 2022 elections just so that the Maoists would not unite again with the opposition UML to form a powerful leftwing government.
The NC, Maoists and the UML’s commitment to contesting the election independently pertain to electoral alliances formed before the polls, not coalitions formed after, Adhikari adds.
The Maoist Centre’s two-day standing committee meeting discussed the anti-secular views of some NC members and Deputy Prime Minister Purna Bahadur Khadka's criticism of Maoist guerrilla excesses during the war.
There is also mutual suspicion between the Maoists and NC over a deal that fell through involving the NC’s Krishna Prasad Sitaula as National Assembly chair in exchange for a Maoist heading Kosi Province. The NC did not back the Maoist candidate, so the Maoists are not supporting Sitaula.
