Rapper-turned-politician upset after defeating senior leader in Nepal elections | Election news

Balendra Shah’s party represents a reformist wave reshaping the politics of the Himalayan nation.

Preliminary and partial results released show a new political party led by a former rapper leading in Nepal’s parliamentary elections, the country’s first since last year’s youth-led coup.

The Rashtriya Swatantra (RSP) has already won 60 out of 165 directly elected seats and is leading in 61 constituencies, the Election Commission of Nepal announced on Saturday.

Its prime ministerial candidate is rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, 35, who won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race and has emerged as a key figure in the 2025 coup that ousted former prime minister Khadga Prasad Oli.

He highlighted health and education for poor Nepalis as a major focus of his campaign, which raised a wave of public anger towards traditional political parties.

Shah, running directly against Oli in the South-East district, won the seat by a wide margin, garnering almost four times more votes than the former prime minister.

He said the vote reflected his refusal to take the “easy way out” and a reckoning with “the problems and betrayals that have affected the country”.

Oil congratulated Shah in a post on X, wishing him a “smooth and successful” term.

(Translation: Balenu Babu, congratulations on your victory! May your five years of tenure be smooth and successful—heartiest wishes!)

Shah, widely known as “Balen”, trained as a civil engineer before breaking out as one of Nepal’s leading rappers, releasing vigilante music targeting corruption and inequality that later became the anthem of the September protests.

His 2022 election as Kathmandu’s first independent mayor was a major upset for the political establishment at the time. His party, the RSP, founded the same year, was built on a similar anti-establishment platform.

Its campaign before Thursday’s vote was highly organized, with a 660-person social media operation and significant funding from the Nepali diaspora, particularly from the United States.

“The country is fed up with old corrupt leaders,” said Birendra Kumar Mehta, a member of the RSP’s central committee.

The September protests, initially sparked by a government ban on social media platforms, quickly escalated into a mass movement against corruption and economic stagnation. At least 77 people died.

Shah emerged as a prominent figure in the protests, and his song Nepal Haseko, Nepal Smiling, garnered over 10 million YouTube views during the unrest. His victory reflects the growing generational divide in the country.

More than 40 percent of Nepal’s nearly 30 million people are under the age of 35, although the leadership of its established parties remains in its 70s.

Nepalese journalist Pranaya Rana described Shah to Al Jazeera as “the outsider spirit that many young Nepalis are looking for to shake up the status quo”.