What Explains Nepal’s Perennial Instability?

In 2017, the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) won nearly two-thirds of seats in Parliament after promising voters “development and prosperity.” Supporters welcomed the new majority government as a chance for progress through stability, after dozens of short-lived coalition governments since the 1990s. Yet today, three and a half years later, the NCP is split in two due to personal – not policy – disputes among top leaders, the future of Prime Minster Khadga Prasad Oli’s government is uncertain, and promises of miraculous economic growth are in tatters.

“I was hopeful that there would be five years of political stability and development,” says Santosh Bhujel a 33-year-old former Maoist child soldier in Nepal’s civil war and now a pig farmer. “Nepali politics is disgusting. I feel betrayed.”

Twenty different governments have ruled Nepal since 2000, the highest turnover rate in all of South Asia. While the immediate cause of the current crisis was an intra-party feud, a variety of factors underlie Nepal’s recurring pattern of instability. Some Nepalis blame weak democratic institutions, while others cite corruption and the exclusion of historically marginalized ethnic groups, so-called low castes, and women. India has interfered in Nepal’s domestic politics in the past, but this time there is little evidence it had a hand in the NCP's split.

Historically, changes in government rarely vanquish any leader for long. Indeed, the same faces from a handful of political parties reappear decade after decade in novel coalitions. In this sense, Kathmandu politics resembles not so much a war zone as a game of musical chairs, or as Bikram Shakya, the owner of a wholesale kitchen-goods store, puts it, “a leg-pulling game.”

“Whoever is in power just tries to stay in their seat, while those out of power try to get into power by pulling down their opponent,” says Shakya. “Meanwhile, no one cares about fulfilling their duties.”

A Constitutional Crisis

To understand the current crisis, it is necessary to go back to 2017. Before general elections that year, the Maoist Center Party and the United Marxist Leninist (UML) Party agreed to campaign together – an alliance that eventually led to their full-fledged merger as the NCP. The Maoists were led by Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, a former rebel commander and skillful behind-the-scenes powerbroker who had twice served as prime minister since laying down arms in 2006. The UML was led by Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, a more conservative leader known for his populist aphorisms and nationalist stance against an informal Indian blockade on Nepal during his first term as prime minster, in 2015-16. After trouncing their main rival, the centrist Nepali Congress Party, in the polls, Oli and Dahal agreed to share the NCP’s chairmanship and take turns as prime minister over the government’s five-year term. Oli would go first.

However, a rift quickly developed between the NCP leaders. Dahal grew concerned as he watched Oli, now prime minister, concentrate power. Oli brought investigation agencies directly under the Prime Minister’s Office, and when activists protested or the media published unfavorable stories, he proposed new bills that threatened free speech and allowed the government to spy on its citizens. Dahal is no great defender of democratic norms himself – he had created a constitutional crisis of his own when he was prime minister – but he worried that Oli’s authoritarian moves would threaten his own prospects.

Their dispute escalated as it became clear that Oli had no intention of handing over the reins to Dahal, as had been agreed. In April 2020, Oli issued two controversial ordinances aimed at weakening his rivals within the NCP, including Dahal and other former UML leaders like Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhalanath Khanal. The party plunged into a crisis that was only postponed temporarily by the mediation of the Chinese ambassador. The dispute escalated once again when Oli prorogued Parliament in July 2020. In December 2020, Dahal’s faction called a no-confidence motion against Oli. To avert the vote, Oli instead dissolved Parliament and called for new polls in spring 2021.

Most Nepalis saw the dispute as originating from the leaders’ egos rather than any political ideology. Dahal gave up on the Maoist revolution when he entered mainstream politics in 2006. For his part, Oli began his political life as a revolutionary in the 1970s, but he more lately embodied social conservatism, making almost Modi-like appeals to Hindu nationalism and showing little regard for the demands of Nepal’s ethnic minorities and “lower” castes. (Both Dahal and Oli are high-caste men from the hills – just as all of Nepal’s prime ministers since 1990 have been.)

Oli’s political opponents quickly challenged his dissolution of Parliament at the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs seemed to have a strong case because the Nepali Constitution requires the prime minister to give his rivals a chance to create an alternative government before dissolving Parliament – something Oli did not do.

The Supreme Court delayed making a decision, and many speculated that the chief justice, who is widely seen as close to Oli, would favor the prime minister. As the Supreme Court dallied, Oli took additional steps to consolidate state power. In early February, he unilaterally appointed new heads to the country’s anti-corruption, human rights, and election commissions – institutions supposed to be independent of politics and serve as a checks and balances on government, and whose leaders are supposed to be approved by Parliament. Many feared that Oli’s appointments would make it difficult to conduct free and fair elections.

Finally, on February 23, just as public faith in institutions plummeted, the Supreme Court seemed to redeem itself – at least partially. Defying expectations, it ordered Parliament reinstated. Many viewed the verdict as a non-partisan victory for democracy and the independence of the judiciary.

However, celebrations were short-lived. On March 7, the Court issued a controversial ruling on another case with deep political ramifications. Dahal, in alliance with Nepal and Khanal, had been trying to split the NCP in order to expel Oli from the party. Their case, which they brought before the Election Commission, seemed strong because they commanded a majority of the NCP’s original central committee and members of Parliament. But before the Election Commission could decide the case, the Supreme Court declared that the name “Nepal Communist Party” (NCP) belonged not to Oli’s and Dahal’s mashup new party formed to fight the last election, but to the relatively obscure left-wing group that had registered it first. The court could have simply ordered Dahal’s and Oli’s party to find a new name, but instead, it declared the NCP defunct and sent all of its members back to their original parties – the UML and Maoist Center – in their pre-merger state.

The Supreme Court’s decision to split the NCP not only seemed to encroach on the Election Commission’s jurisdiction, it handed Oli a huge victory. Sending Dahal and his supporters back to the Maoist Party separated them from Khanal, Nepal, and their supporters, giving the Oli camp majority control of the newly resurrected UML. Under Nepali law, intra-party dissenters like Khanal and Nepal cannot leave their party without forfeiting their seats, unless they can convince 40 percent of the party to leave with them, which would be difficult. Moreover, the UML party whip will compel the dissenters to vote for Oli if there is a new no-confidence vote. In effect, the court’s decision empowered Oli by dividing his opponents.

For now, Oli remains prime minister and chairman of the UML, while Dahal’s Maoist Center is technically in a coalition with the UML. Dahal is trying to cobble together an alternative coalition before filing a new motion of no-confidence to remove Oli. One possibility is an alliance between the Maoists, the Nepali Congress, and a third, smaller group, the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP).

Oli, too, is courting the other parties. Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba seems willing to join Oli, provided Oli gives Deuba the prime ministership, but most other Congress leaders oppose such a coalition. The party recently announced it will not be joining Oli’s government. Similarly, within the JSP, one faction is inclined to join Oli while another wants to join Dahal. Meanwhile, within the UML, the Nepal-Khanal faction continues to protest Oli’s iron grip and could still split the party.

Parliament, though reinstated, remains in limbo. Maoist and Nepali Congress members of Parliament have skipped legislative sessions to protest Oli’s unilateral appointments to the government’s watchdog commissions. Cases against those appointments are still being considered at the Supreme Court.

The Roots of Instability

What are the root causes of Nepali governments’ perennial instability? Ask five Nepalis, and you might get five different answers.

Monarchists – a small but vocal minority who have intensified their public rallies in recent months – claim that instability stems from the 2008 abolition of the monarchy. Kamal Thapa, the leader of the Hindu royalist and nationalist Rastriya Prajatantra Party, often claims that only reinstating the king and Hinduism as the state religion will foster a sense of national unity. Others, however, point out that Nepal has significant populations of Buddhists, Muslims, and Christians, and the last monarch, King Gyanendra, actually destabilized the country by seizing power in a coup in 2005.

Some Nepalis on both the right and the left think that India is at the center of political instability. Certainly, India played a role in supporting Nepali movements for democracy in 1990 and 2006, which weakened the monarchy. In 2009, India played kingmaker to a new government led by the UML, ousting Dahal from his first stint as prime minister. Then in 2015, India imposed an unofficial blockade after Nepal promulgated a new constitution that did not satisfy the demands of Madhesis, a marginalized population who share ethnic and linguistic ties with certain Indian groups.

However, Amish Raj Mulmi, the author of “All Roads Lead North,” a new book on Nepal-China relations, says people blame India too often for Nepal’s internal crises. “If Nepali politicians don’t provide the space to external actors, the latter will not be able to create the space by themselves,” he says.

Mulmi notes that China cultivated close relations with the NCP but failed to prevent its breakup. He says the situation is akin to 2006, when China supported the Nepali monarchy against an India-backed alliance between the Maoists and democratic political parties, which emerged victorious. “Has China put all its eggs in the NCP basket? If it did so, it’s certainly facing the outcomes today,” he says. However, other recent developments, such as the successful bid by a Chinese company for the contract to build the Sunkoshi irrigation tunnel project, suggest that China may be willing to decouple its economic investments from its political engagements in Nepal.

Another potential cause for instability is the weakness of Nepal’s independent institutions. The judiciary is frequently accused of corruption, and even when courts do act with integrity, they face pushback from political parties. Many analysts argue that President Bidhya Devi Bhandari undermined her office’s non-partisan role by immediately implementing Oli’s unconstitutional request to dissolve Parliament in December.

Mohna Ansari, a former commissioner of the National Human Rights Commission, says that without independent institutions to rein them in, politicians quickly leap over boundaries meant to check their power. “The judiciary, the constitutional bodies, Parliament – all those independent institutions are losing their credibility,” she says.

Other Nepalis link instability to corruption. Scandals are commonplace, from the national airlines taking kickbacks for wide-body jets to contractors skimping on materials for local roads. Corruption is made possible by patronage networks in which lower-level officials give higher-level leaders illicit funds in exchange for impunity. This turns politics into a zero-sum game in which cooperation has little value. Partisanship, in turn, fuels instability.

“Instability generates corruption; corruption generates instability,” says Rabindra Mishra, a former BBC journalist and current leader of the reformist Bibeksheel Sajha Party, which many observers compare to India’s Aam Aadmi Party. “What we need is good governance, zero tolerance toward corruption, and free and quality public education and public health.”

Others say that Nepal will never achieve stability until it ends systemic exclusion against ethnic minorities, so-called low castes, and women. For example, the Madhesis, who live in the Terai plains, have long felt marginalized by concentration of power in Kathmandu. Although the 2015 constitution promised to devolve power to the provinces, many Madhesis remain unhappy with the central government’s de facto retention of powers and they continue to call for a constitutional amendment to strengthen federalism. Similarly, under Oli, the government rolled back a number of the constitution’s inclusion provisions. In 2019, the Public Service Commission quietly changed how it implements reservation quotas, allowing higher castes to be recruited into the civil service in larger numbers.

Sapana Sanjeevani, a political researcher, activist, and poet, says that the government must also address gender inequality in order to achieve stability. Amendments are urgently needed to the constitution’s controversial citizenship provisions, which make it difficult for women to pass citizenship on to their children.

“What is going on right now was predicted,” says Sanjeevani. “Every political decision is made by old, upper-caste men... From the beginning, we knew this constitution is not inclusive, and so this so-called Left Alliance was not going to work.”

A Permanent Establishment

Ujjwal Prasai, a columnist and activist, challenges the common notion that the frequent turnover in Nepali governments is a sign of instability. “There is a kind of stability in Nepal – things have not changed,” he says. “The same political leaders reappear again and again in government.”

Paraphrasing C.K. Lal, another political thinker, Prasai says that a small coterie of influential politicians and parties make up Nepal’s “permanent establishment.” When disputes arise, alliances are rearranged, but new members are rarely admitted to the permanent establishment.

Mishra, the Bibeksheel Sajha politician, thinks it is paradoxical that Nepali voters still vote for political leaders who repeatedly disappoint them. Despite running on an anti-corruption platform, his own party received zero seats in the national parliament in 2017. “Nepali society is suffering from Stockholm syndrome, politically,” he says. “The political parties have held the entire Nepali society hostage.”

Prasai, who protested Oli’s Parliament dissolution as part of a loose alliance called the Brihat Nagarik Andolan, or Civil Society Movement, says that citizens have a hard time imagining any alternative to the status quo. In order to attract a broad cross-section of society, the Civil Society Movement has kept its demands general. After the Supreme Court reinstated Parliament, the movement settled on “citizen supremacy” as its goal, which Prasai defines as “the idea that citizens should participate in all decisions that take place.”

For the moment, Nepali democracy seems to have only partially evaded Oli’s power grab. Parliament is reinstated, but the prime minister still exerts control over important watchdog institutions. Oli may find a new coalition partner soon, or he could be replaced by another government. Meanwhile, the NCP’s promises of stability, prosperity, and development are starting to feel like a distant memory.

While much remains uncertain, one thing is clear: Nepal’s long-standing pattern of political volatility continues.