General Z of Nepal kicked out the old parties. Will it vote for him in an important election? | Election news

Kathmandu, Nepal – As Nepal heads to crucial parliamentary elections on March 5, the Himalayan country’s established parties are fighting not just for votes but also for legitimacy.

That legitimacy was called into question when thousands of Nepalese youth took to the streets in September last year, demanding the resignation of an aging old guard that has dominated Nepal’s politics for two decades.

Sparked by a social media ban, the protests led by Gen Z soon turned into a widespread revolt over a stagnant economy and corruption among the ruling elite, forcing 74-year-old Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli to resign and form an interim government.

The protests, which left at least 77 people dead, reflected popular discontent with established political parties, including Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), a Nepali Communist Party composed of former Maoist rebels, and the centrist Nepali Congress Party.

Many young Nepalis see these parties as an entitled and unresponsive political class prone to corruption.

Ahead of Thursday’s vote, these parties said they had learned lessons from last year’s coup and promised to do more to tackle corruption.

But the youth workers are not convinced.

‘we’ll see’

For Rajesh Chand, 27, a business student in the capital Kathmandu, voting is no longer about party labels.

“I’m not really interested in old or new parties,” he told Al Jazeera.

“I am interested in how we can move this country forward in the right direction. We have witnessed the old political establishment for many years and no one has done anything. The country is sinking. We need to stop the corruption. That is the beginning.”

Rakshya Bam, 26, one of the central figures of the protest, said the debate should not be framed simply as old versus new.

“We have no problem if the old party endorses our reform agenda and governs accordingly,” he said. “And for newcomers, they shouldn’t forget the essence of the Gen Z revolution.”

He noted that many parties have adopted the language of the movement in their manifestos. “We welcome it,” he said. “But we’ll see.”

Few parties were more shaken by the coup than the country’s oldest political party, the Nepali Congress (NC), which was in coalition with the Oli government.

Senior NC leader and former information minister Minendra Rizal told Al Jazeera that Oli’s “hubris” during the coup severely tarnished his party’s image. “NC should never be in coalition with the Oli government,” he told Al Jazeera.

But Rizal insisted that he had changed parties. The leadership that led during the protests, including former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Devuba, will no longer contest the elections.

In January, the party chose 49-year-old Gagan Kumar Thapa as its new president and prime ministerial candidate.

“We admitted that we made mistakes,” Rizal said. “We’re asking for a second chance. We’ve apologized loud and clear.”

But he acknowledged that voters — 30 percent under the age of 40 — are skeptical.

“When I returned to my field, I felt immense frustration,” he said. “People are asking for clear explanations about our agenda and what went wrong.”

Oli seeks power again

For Oli’s CPN-UML, however, the March 5 election is more about survival than renewal.

Prithivi Subba Gurung, a former communications minister under the Oli government, framed the contest as a battle to defend democracy.

“Our elected prime minister was deposed,” he said. “We don’t agree with how this election came about, but as a democratic party we cannot condemn it. We must fight to protect democratic values.”

Gurung argued that the party has inducted younger leaders into its ranks, including dozens of Gen Zs. He insisted that CPN-UML has “always stood for Gen Z sentiments of anti-corruption and good governance”.

Although Oli’s social media ban sparked protests, he was re-elected as the party’s president and remains its prime ministerial candidate. Some within the CPN-UML called for his resignation after the unrest, saying the dissent was ineffective.

Gurung maintained that there is a need to regulate social media. “Companies operating in Nepal must follow our laws and pay taxes,” he said. “Jari is right, maybe there wasn’t time.”

Political scientist Sucheta Payakurel said the revolt was caused by “inadvertence” within the political establishment. For frustration to rise to that level, mainstream parties must repeatedly ignore public concerns and take irresponsible decisions, he said.

“Democracy is generally a tolerant system,” he told Al Jazeera. “For citizens to be angry, those in power must have failed them in a serious way.”

He argued that while some factions within political parties are now introspective, others are resistant to change.

“Some of the old parties are self-critical,” he told Al Jazeera. “They may be revisiting their old ways. But there are too many moving pieces to predict outcomes. It’s too early to tell.”

Nepal uses a mixed electoral system – first-past-the-post and proportional representation – which ends up splitting seats between multiple parties, making a single-party majority difficult.

As a result, coalition governments and devolved “musical chairs” have fueled public disillusionment. Since 2008, when it became a republic, Nepal has seen 14 governments and nine prime ministers, including the current caretaker leader Sushila Karki.

That’s why the fear of a return to political instability is at the heart of Gen Z anxieties.

“We fear another coalition that fails to deliver,” Baum said. “Even if it is a coalition, they must work together and not fail the aspirations of the people again.”

‘Repack and Resell’

About 19 million Nepalis will vote on Thursday to elect a 275-member parliament – 165 by first-past-the-post and 110 by proportional representation. About 800,000 people are first-time voters.

These young voters have not gone unnoticed, as parties have tailored their messages and incentives to appeal to them.

Oli’s social media ban, which sparked Gen Z protests, has given way to pledges of digital access and entrepreneurship support, including a 10-gigabyte-a-month mobile internet package for young people and $10,000 cards for young business owners.

Manifestos have been rebranded as “commitment papers” and “promise papers” — an attempt, say critics, to repackage politics in Gen Z-friendly language.

Political scientist Payakurel describes this shift as “political consumerism”.

“They’re trying to repackage and resell themselves,” he said. “The policies seem ambitious, but many do not address the structural roots of the crisis.”

Electoral politics is not the only arena for change, said Baum, a former protest leader.

“I am happy to see friends contesting the elections,” he told Al Jazeera. “But we question them constantly. They are under our vigilance.”

For now, he is committed to activism outside Parliament, he said. “I believe in strengthening the streets.”

This tension between institutional reforms and outside pressure may define Nepal’s political future.

Meanwhile, traditional parties dismiss the new additions as lacking in ideology, particularly rapper and former Kathmandu mayor, Balen Shah, who is a prime ministerial front-runner.

A relative newcomer to mainstream politics, Shah, 35, joined the Rashtriya Swatantra Party (RSP) and is running against Oli in Japa-5, a CPN-UML stronghold 300km (186 miles) southeast of Kathmandu.

Despite his disdain for public speaking, Shah is immensely popular with Gen Z. “I don’t know how to talk; I know how to work,” he once said, a satire on the existing political establishment.

For the establishment, he comes across as a politician without ideology. “Ideologies do not come in waves of popularity. Voters should not fall for it,” Gurung told Al Jazeera. “A party needs strong ideologies, a vision and a mission. His (Balen’s) party has none of that.”

Payakurel warns that parties without a coherent ideological base are prone to disintegration. But she asked: Did the established parties really live up to the ideals they professed?

“We have to ask the old parties if their actions reflect their principles,” he told Al Jazeera.

“And we must ask the new parties what they have to say. Without these questions, the voting process will be incomplete.”