The last few days have added more episodes to Nepal’s cycle of political instability, with the new alliance government led by Khadka Prasad Oli replacing the Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda-led coalition.
This is the 30th tenure of a prime minister – all of them belonging to 13 individuals – in Nepal in the last 34 years since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1990. It’s the 15th since 2008 when the country was declared a full-fledged republic. And it’s the ninth government to take charge since the promulgation of the 2015 constitution.
The latest turn of events has been swift, even when measured by the standards of the frequent shifts in Kathmandu’s political equations. After all, it was only in March this year that there was a reset in Prachanda’s alliance government.
His Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre) had built a new coalition with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), led by former PM KP Sharma Oli, after snapping ties with the Nepal Congress, which was led by former PM Sher Bahadur Deuba. But it took Oli’s CPN-UML) less than four months to snap ties with Prachanda’s CPN-MC to enter into an alliance with the Deuba-led NC.
Shifting alliances
After the November 2022 polls, Prachanda had managed to emerge as a consensual PM even though his party only has 32 members in the Pratinidhi Sabha, or the house of representatives.
The NC had emerged as Nepal’s single-largest party with 89 members, followed by the CPN-UML with 79. Both parties had lent support to the Prachanda-led government but these allies left the coalition at different points of time in the last two years.
When the CPN-UML had snapped ties with the governing coalition over Prachanda’s decision to support NC’s Ramchandra Paddle for the office of the president, the government survived with NC’s support. And when the NC withdrew support in March this year, Oli’s CPN-UML rejoined the government.
And now, Oli has joined hands with the NC to form the new government. And the formation is based on the rotational PM formula – both Oli and NC’s Deuba will share the PM’s post, each for the half of the government’s remaining term.
Coalition politics
There has been a view that the instability in the power corridors of the Himalayan country mirrors the nature of its coalition politics, which is a product of the fractured nature of its polity and electoral verdicts. This has become more pronounced since 2008 when the country became a republic.
The lack of a decisive mandate could also be a result of provisions of the 2015 constitution which requires 165 of 275 seats in the house of representatives to be filled through direct voting and 110 to be decided by proportional representation.
Whatever the factors causing it, the fact remains that the recurrent spells of political instability in the country has meant that Nepal is a democracy with one of the shortest survival periods for the elected governments.
In a comparative study of the number of government tenures countries have had since 1990, Nepal was placed at the fourth spot.
India tie, China eye
New Delhi would keep a close eye on the latest political realignment in Kathmandu with the return of Oli, a known China supporter.
During his earlier stint as PM, Oli wasn’t keen on nurturing the tradition of close ties with India, and this was evident in the middle of the last decade. That was also a phase when Nepal drafted a new constitution for itself and looked at representation within its population, including those who traced their ancestry to India or lived close to India’s borders.
This was also the time when Oli’s critical views on India, seeing India as a domineering big brother next door, occupied Nepal’s public space. Along with other allied factors, this approach precipitated protests and even a border blockade crisis in 2015 – one of the few but recent irritants in India-Nepal’s close cultural and historical bonds. No wonder this coincided with a period that saw clear imprints of China’s growing interest in Nepal’s economy and geostrategic location, as well as the enlisting of its support for regional dominance ambitions.
Around 2018, Chinese meddling in Nepali politics became an instrument of Beijing’s policy for the region.
Back then, one of the clearest demonstrations of Beijing’s growing clout in Kathmandu was the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu playing a significant role in the merger of Nepal’s two distinct communist parties – CPN-MC and CPN-UML. Their merger into a single entity, the NCP, was preceded by the alliance’s victory in the 2017 elections. However, the factionalism-ridden NCP soon withered away with rival Prachanda and Oli blocs making it difficult to survive beyond January 2021.
The rift within the China-engineered merger worked well to allay some of the concerns in New Delhi, but new irritants emerged in 2020 as the Oli government took the unilateral decision to draw new maps that showed the Indian territories of Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura as belonging to Nepal. This historically dubious weak claim seemed either instigated by China or was part of the government’s effort to create a new support base among Nepal’s voters. It was also a phase when, perhaps helped by the impact of the economic blockade, China surpassed India as the largest investor in Nepal’s economy. In terms of imports too, the volume of Nepal’s imports from China tripled from 2013-14 to 2022-23.
That, however, hasn’t chipped away the key role India continues to play in Nepal’s economy.
India still continues to be Nepal’s largest trade partner, with 2019-20 data indicating that bilateral trade exceeds $7 billion. Additionally, the open international border between the two countries means that about eight million citizens of Nepal live and work in India. This people-to-people contact is based on deep historical ties and shared cultural bonds. These aspects of open border engagement and traditional ties can’t be easily offset by strategic moves and an investment spree by the big northern neighbour.
That, however, doesn’t mean that New Delhi can’t lose sight of the fact that a dominant regional power like China is trying to woo Nepal towards its sphere of influence. This challenge also implies that the China outreach gives Kathmandu a Beijing card to dangle while negotiating better deals from New Delhi.
It’s possible that the return of Oli may reinforce the chances of Kathmandu using the China card to negotiate ties with neighbours, including Delhi. But the Indian assessment could be comforted by the fact that the Deuba-led NC wouldn’t give a free run to Oli’s pro-China tilt. The NC’s worldview, and particularly its neighbourhood outlook, could be taken as a tempering influence.
That’s one constraint of coalition politics in Kathmandu that New Delhi would hope to work in its favour. But given the vagaries of Nepali power politics – marked by fleeting alliances and frequent spells of instability – India will be alert to the new power equations in its northeastern neighbour.
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