Nepali politics has been polarised in a new fashion, particularly after the July 1 deal between the two largest parties to form a governing coalition.

While the CPN-UML and the Nepali Congress, with most seats in the House of Representatives, teamed up to edge the Maoists out of the government, the pretext given was to tide the country over its “unprecedented crisis of public confidence in the government” and a “historic low of hope in the general people”.

The opposition bloc led by preceding prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal of the Maoist Centre, with the Rabi Lamichhane-led Rastriya Swatantra Party and Madhav Nepal’s Unified Socialist by his side, counters the narrative that the two parties joined forces to pull the country from the brink. Voices on the opposition benches are that old foxes of Nepali politics were ruffled by the Dahal government’s sparing none in corruption cases policy, even those working closely with top politicians.

What’s questionable are intentions, not issues. No informed citizen denies today that the country faces humongous challenges. For good or bad, nearly 4,000 Nepalis leave the country daily; those who return are far fewer. The country’s farm and industrial outputs are way short of its domestic requirements. There’s a gloom in the jobs sector and wages are stagnant, even falling.

The constitutional dynamite

Nepal’s new constitution will mark a decade next year. Feared to fail from its inception, it still cries for full ownership at home and the goodwill of the country’s all-dominant southern neighbour. The Congress and the UML are blaming it, rather than their own waning popularity, for the country’s federal and provincial legislatures, where no single party currently has a majority and government changes have been too frequent.

Tampering with the constitution may be akin to opening Pandora’s box. After years-long negotiations, the three major parties had hastily sealed it in 2015.

There are several misgivings about the new political order. The Hindu hardliners aren’t happy with the secular state. The ethnic groups or janajatis aren’t satisfied with how most of the provinces were carved out or named. Women need more equality in terms of representation. The provinces want more autonomy. However, the clamour for charter revision is only about the Congress and the UML maintaining their old hegemony. The rise of new forces threatens them, and they want to tame the tendencies of adventurist politicians like Maoist supremo Dahal or stub out the quest for power in Madhav Nepal by denying them opportunities to regroup or forge electoral alliances.

A blamed factor in the current state of hung parliament is the low threshold for parties to claim their proportional representation seats. A slight rise from the current 3 percent of total valid votes would reduce the number of national parties by at least two, giving their proportional seats to the bigger forces. While the most prominent parties’ frustration at being undercut by smaller forces at the elections is visible, getting the constitutional amendments through is not easy.

A clash of titans

Sharing of power between the two competing parties is fraught with problems. As the developments so far suggest, there are dissatisfied aspirants aplenty, particularly in Congress, despite the swift formation of the Cabinet under Oli. What looks more complicated is installing new provincial governments as the existing ones have toppled after the change of the ruling coalition in Kathmandu.

In the provinces, which are in the eye of an anti-federal storm that’s brewing in the marginalised communities and among Hindu hardliners, chief ministers are already facing problems with shaping their Cabinet. Ministerial positions are reportedly falling short in Gandaki as the number of hopefuls is too high. Splitting ministries to appoint more ministers gives rise to mass frustration that politicians are trying to steal public finances.

This KP Sharma Oli government is based on a seven-point agreement between the two parties. Under the deal, the UML leader will remain prime minister for the first two years. Oli will then hand over the reins to Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Congress, who will steer the government until a new parliament is elected. That’s subject to things staying their course, though. In the unpredictable politics of today’s Nepal, what’s not agreed to often happens.

Politicians well acquainted with Oli do not see smooth sailing for both the UML and the Congress. One such doubter is RK Mainali, one of Oli’s jail mates from the repressive Panchayat regime. The Congress and the UML are historical arch-rivals, who have used every opportunity to check on each other in power and elections. In the most recent exercise, each has used the Maoist Centre as a coalition partner or an electoral ally to defeat the rival party. Mainali argues that if the Supreme Court rules in favour of Oli in the case of constitutionality of the government formation process, he will, in due course, make the UML the largest party by taking in smaller leftist forces.

If the court ousts Oli, ruling that the government should have been formed under Article 76(3) of the constitution, rather than Article 76(2) through which Oli came in, Deuba will be appointed the prime minister as the leader of the single largest party. This could set in motion the downfall of Nepal’s fragmented communist front.

Bay of Bengal climate

There’s a big churn in the political climate surrounding the Bay of Bengal nations. First with the Sri Lankan uprising in 2022, then the regime changes in the Maldives late last year and Imran Khan’s political purge in Pakistan early this year, a popular storm in Bangladesh rooted Sheikh Hasina out of power on Monday and threw her into exile.

Early cautions from the events unfolding in the country 27 kilometres away from Nepal suggest that rulers in the neighbourhood should brace for potential repercussions at home. It’d be undesirable for the government in Kathmandu to inflame the public in any way at a time of desperation, starting right from the 2020 pandemic and the cost of living crisis worsened by Russia’s ongoing Ukraine war and the escalating conflict in West Asia.

One such trigger in Nepal could be haphazard tampering of the constitution while the dust over its chaotic promulgation nine years ago has barely settled. We should not forget that the protests in the east over the province’s name ‘Koshi' have only been lulled by the summer heat and monsoon rains. Also, as the Bangladeshi situation has shown, not allowing big or small forces in peaceful politics can have deadly consequences.

In Nepal, too, the Congress and the UML have floated a self-appeasing idea that smaller forces should be swallowed up by ideological polarisation, aided with the tool of a proposed 5-10 percent vote threshold mandatory to become a national party. This will surely draw up a strong bloc of parties opposed to such a scheme for spearheading a movement in a volatile situation.