Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah was sworn in as Nepal’s prime minister on Friday, with the responsibility of restoring political stability and generating employment in the impoverished Himalayan nation, which has long struggled with fragile governments and limited economic growth.
Shah became prime minister after his three-year-old Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) won 182 seats in the 275-member parliament in the March 5 election, the first vote after the anti-corruption Gen Z protests in which 76 people were killed in September last year.
Youngest Prime Minister
A former mayor of the capital, Kathmandu, Shah, 35, is Nepal’s youngest prime minister in decades and the first Madhesi – people of the southern plains bordering India – to lead the Himalayan nation that is wedged between Asian giants India and China.
Shah, who was wearing skin-tight trousers, a matching jacket, his signature black Nepali cloth cap and sunglasses, was sworn in at the President House in the presence of diplomats and senior government officials.
“The first test of the new government lies in transparent and prompt delivery of services to people, who expect early signs of good governance from Sunday itself,” political analyst Puranjan Acharya said. Sunday is a working day in Nepal.
Gen Z Protests Report
Acharya said Shah’s early challenge is to implement the report of a panel that investigated the violence during the anti-corruption protests, a key demand of the families of the victims. The report recommended the prosecution of those responsible for the crackdown, including then Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli.
The youth-led protests were fuelled by a lack of jobs and endemic corruption in the country of 30 million people, where a fifth of the population lives in poverty and an estimated 1,500 people leave the country daily for work abroad.
Political instability has been a bane, with 32 governments taking office since 1990 and none of them completing a five-year-term.
The Nepali Congress party, the country’s oldest party, became a distant second group in parliament with just 38 seats. The Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) of Oli, who was forced to resign after the Gen Z unrest, controls 25 members.
Former Chief Justice Sushila Karki led the nation through the interim period through to the parliamentary election.
(With inputs from Reuters)
