Nepal polls: New-gen candidates challenge old guard Oli for top post

Kathmandu: Election campaign is heating up in Nepal despite the winter chill in the Himalayan nation, with three political parties projecting their prime ministerial candidates for the March 5 general elections.

While the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), the largest communist party, has officially announced the recently deposed prime minister K P Sharma Oli, 74, as its prime ministerial candidate, Nepal's oldest party, the Nepali Congress, and the newly formed Rastriya Swotantra Party have projected their respective prime ministerial candidates below the age of 50.

Gagan Thapa, 49, was elected the president of Nepali Congress (NC) last week. Soon after his election, Bishwo Prakash Sharma, the party's vice president, announced that Thapa would be the prime ministerial candidate.

"The election of a dynamic leader of Nepali Congress, Gagan Thapa, who represents the spirit of the Gen Z youths, to the post of president has completely changed the present election scenario," said senior human rights activist Charan Prasai.

However, another faction of the Nepali Congress, led by former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba, has challenged the Election Commission's decision to officially recognise the faction led by Thapa as the real NC.

Structural engineer and rapper-turned-politician, Balendra Shah, 35, was elected Mayor of Kathmandu Metropolitan City with an overwhelming majority of votes in 2022.

Shah, also known as Balen, is very popular among youths not only in Kathmandu but across the country, with his sweeping reform programmes and beautification of Kathmandu metropolis.

Balen, who won the mayoral election as an independent candidate, has now joined the Rastriya Swotantra Party along with his team to contest the general election.

He tendered his resignation from the post on Sunday to field nomination for the parliamentary election on January 20, the date fixed by the Election Commission for filing nomination papers.

CPN-UML chair Oli will be challenged by Balen, who is half his age, as both have announced to contest the parliamentary election from the Jhapa-5 constituency, making the eastern Nepal district in Koshi province a talk of the town these days.

Oli has been elected from Jhapa district to Parliament for six terms in the past three decades, except for the first Constituent Assembly election in 2008.

In the last general election in 2022, Oli was elected with a huge margin of over 28,000 votes against his nearest rival from the Nepali Congress.

This time, Oli is to face popular youth leader Balen, who is half his age. While Balen represents the emerging youth force of Nepal, Oli is the face of the conservative and hardliner force.

The Gen Z youths have blamed then-prime minister Oli and the then-home minister Ramesh Lekhak from Nepali Congress for the excessive use of force to suppress their movement in September last year, in which 77 people lost their lives.

Oli, who has already taken oath as the prime minister four times, fled on an army helicopter in his last tenure on the second day of the Gen Z protests, as hundreds of angry protesters vandalised the prime minister's quarter at Baluwatar, Kathmandu.

"For Oli, who tactfully sidelined his opponents within the party and emerged as its unchallenged leader, the parliamentary election this time will not only be a tough challenge but can also threaten his over five-decade-long political career, given the growing popularity of his rival ex-Mayor Balen," said Saraswoti Karmacharya, senior journalist at Nepal Samacharpatra.

Other emerging candidates in the scenario are Ujyalo Nepal Party chairman Kulman Ghising, who ended 16 hours of loadshedding in Nepal as the Nepal Electricity Authority chief, and Harka Sampanga, mayor of Dharan Sub-metropolitan City.

Both Ghising and Sampang, representing the ethnic communities of Nepal, have also become popular choices for one or the other Gen Z groups.