Election countdown: 4 more months

Prime Minister Sushila Karki may look calm, composed and unruffled, but with elections only four months away, she faces mounting pressure from all directions. 

Despite reiterating that her only agenda is to hold those polls on 5 March 2026, there are distractions and detractors. She faces pressure to nominate new ministers, the Supreme Court has rescinded her decision to recall ambassadors, industrialists whose electricity supply has been cut off are on warpath.

This is why in the past week, she convened the first meeting between GenZ representatives and the political parties, consulted with Nepal-based ambassadors, met the chief ministers of all seven provinces, met the chiefs of security agencies, and invited editors from the mainstream press to Baluwatar.

Her message was the same to all of them: my core priority is elections. But the message she got from most interlocutors: current conditions need to improve if elections are to be free, fair and peaceful.

The biggest obstacle to credible elections is that the three main political parties are convinced that they will be trounced, and are too busy resolving bitter internal power struggles.

The Maoists appear to be the most eager to face voters, the second echelon of the Nepali Congress (NC) is trying to convince the establishment Deuba faction convinced the party will face a humiliating defeat if the leadership is not overhauled. 

The UML is still smarting from being ousted and the violence and destruction of September. But K P Oli shows no signs of remorse or a realisation of the enormity of what happened two months ago.    

The RSP could lead the charge for change, but with its leader in jail the party is floundering. New parties are being formed right up to the deadline, and some members of Karki’s cabinet and inner circle appear keen to contest. The newly-formed GenZ Front led by Rakshya Bam appears to be the precursor to a new party.

The GenZ-parties meeting last week must have frustrated the prime minister because there is disagreement within the youth movement as well as in the established parties (as well as between them) on the elections themselves.

Prime Minister Karki expressed some of this exasperation in her meeting with editors on Friday: “The original three demands of the GenZ were anti-corruption, governance and lack of job opportunities which was causing mass migration. But there are now new demands like directly elected prime minister to an interim Constitution.”

But she also applauded the youth for their political, legal and constitutional maturity in a short period of time and said the political parties were committed to participating in elections.

“In the GenZ I see a young Ram Chandra Paudel, a young Sher Bahadur Deuba,” she said, “They have the same energy and commitment to build a better Nepal.”

The prime minister comes across as someone genuinely interested in putting the country back on the right track, and her remarks are candid and not rehearsed. She said at one point: “Why don’t the party leaders just remove themselves, and make way for new faces?”

It is widely believed that Karki’s name was first proposed by Kathmandu mayor Balen Shah to the GenZ whose followers then voted for her on Discord. 

Balen Shah sees himself as a kingmaker, and is irked that the government does not listen to him. This week he shot off an abusive social media post at midnight that he immediately deleted, lashing out at India, the US and China as well as the three main parties. He has now said he is not going to stand in elections, and will complete his mayoral term.

Karki and Shah have met several times in the past month, and the prime minister denied any disagreement: “I regard him as my son, and he sees me as an elder sister.” 

She called her government a mediator between GenZ groups and political parties, and urged businessman Durga Prasai, who has been threatening protests to reinstate a Hindu monarchy, to contest the election.

Karki justified the recall of ambassadors, saying it was necessary because they were political appointees who had been bad-mouthing her caretaker government and were corrupt. 

Some GenZ groups are impatient about the government dragging its feet on arresting former prime minister Oli and ex-home minister Ramesh Lekhak and others for the 8 September massacre outside Parliament. They are especially critical of Home Minister Om Aryal.

“They demanded we resign immediately if we could not punish those responsible for the 8 September killings,” recalled Karki, but that had to look at the overall situation and bring them to participate in elections.

Home Minister Aryal was also at the meeting with editors, and clarified: “We believe in the rule of law, and will follow due process. Our top priority was to bring the situation back to normal, and stop any violent retaliation.” 

Asked about how investment can be revived after pictures of burning Hilton and Ncell spread around the word, Karki didn’t have a specific answer.

In front of the editors, Karki confronted her ministers about whether they had electoral ambitions. Home Minister Aryal and Finance Minister Rameshore Khanal shook their heads, but Energy and Infrastructure Minister Kulman Ghising stared unsmiling at his notes. Ghising is said to be in talks with the RSP to find a way for his Ujyalo Party to work together. 

The Prime Minister appears not only committed to elections, but convinced that security, infrastructure, budget, participation, registration of candidates and voters are in place to make it happen.

She has no time to think of what will happen if elections do not happen. The scenario is quite unthinkable: elections are postponed till May, the interim government’s mandate expires, Parliament is reinstated. 

This is the scenario K P Oli and his UML seem to be counting on, but which most analysts say, will lead the country into a long dark tunnel of extended instability.

Sushila Karki says she has no time to think about elections not happening: “We do not have the luxury of failure. We will work with everyone to make elections happen, because it is Nepal’s future at stake. And when a new government is formed, I will not stay here a day longer.”