Campaigning for Nepal’s so called “GenZ” election ends at midnight on Monday. Thereafter an Election Commission mandated cooling off period takes hold before voting opens on March 5th.
The tea leaves are hard to read even for the average Nepali, but it would appear that the communist parties (whether KP Sharma Oli’s CPN or Prachand’s Maoists) are out of favour with an electorate still angry over the deaths of 19 youth in police firing during the 2025 uprising.
Much of the attention has focused on Balendra Shah of the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP), a rapper whose administrative performance as mayor of Kathmandu has won him a large following among young people.
Shah quit as Kathmandu mayor on Sunday and will file papers on Tuesday, formally seeking election from Jhapa-5, the constituency in south-eastern Jhapa district bordering India. It’s also Oli’s constituency nurtured over four elections.
“The RSP has established itself as a political force and could be the single largest party when the results are out but without being able to form a majority government,” is the assessment of Maj-Gen Binod Basnyat, formerly of the Nepal Amy and currently a political commentator, during a conversation with this correspondent in Kathmandu last Saturday.
“Balen is trying his best, using politics and social media as his outreach,” Basnyat said “but it is tough going. The Nepali Congress (NC) under new chief Gagan Thapa could be in second place and he has in various ways told people that he realises his party’s mistakes and they want to make amends.”
The irony is if the NC then under Sher Bahadur Deuba had read the tea leaves correctly, he could have yielded place to Thapa. Meaning there may have been no need for the GenZ uprising with Thapa taking over the mantle of the country’s youth.
But Deuba’s refusal to go quietly saw a struggle within the party and a special convention had to be called in January, resulting in Thapa’s election.
Devraj Chalise, NC spokesman told this correspondent at the party’s headquarters in Kathmandu, that they were confident of doing well under Thapa. But he gave the impression the NC leadership was looking beyond this election, seeing it perhaps as an interim period to strengthen itself and form its own government later on.
A cross-section of journalists in Kathmandu and Jhapa told this correspondent that the communists are completely out of favour in Nepal. They acknowledge that while former prime minister Oli has been able to overcome opposition from within to lead the party again, “the sense is he has been mismanaging things.”
Prachanda for his part has accepted mistakes and the need for change while ensuring he remains in the saddle. But for how much longer is not clear.
Of Nepal’s nearly 19 million electorate, around 800,000 are first time voters, meaning young people of 18 years and above. They are sick of the established politicians, they want somebody to stand for them, somebody clean. For now that man is Balen Shah.
