Prime Minister Balen Shah has restored Sudan Gurung to one of the most powerful offices in the federation. This decision has left many pro-change Nepalis in sheer delight. Their enthusiasm is not difficult to understand, as Gurung, to supporters, represents things that have become increasingly attractive in contemporary politics—novelty and decisiveness. He appears energetic where others seem lethargic, direct where others appear evasive, and willing to act where others endlessly deliberate. To many citizens frustrated by elite inertia, bureaucratic paralysis and transactional politics, Gurung embodies the possibility of ‘change’—a word very dear to Nepal’s uncritical population conditioned by RSP’s “nothing happened in 36 years” narrative.

While democracies cannot function if public frustration is dismissed as ignorance, constitutional democracies are ‘tested’ precisely when popular figures are involved. Institutions are not designed primarily to constrain politicians whom nobody likes but to, in fact, constrain politicians whom many admire. The debate surrounding Gurung’s reappointment, therefore, suffers from a fundamental confusion whereby it treats the controversy that caused his resignation as though it were the same controversy that surrounded his appointment.

If the probe committee’s findings are credible, they should be presented (and explained in layperson’s terms) to the public, but the government has decided to keep the findings private. In any case, arguendo, Gurung was indeed given a clean chit by the report; the scandal that led to his resignation was still not the principal reason many—including this columnist—questioned his appointment in March.

The unopened files

Long before the asset controversy emerged, concerns existed regarding the events of September 9, Gurung’s relationships with security institutions (including the army), his unusually hot-blooded and confrontational style of politics, and the broader propriety of placing such a politically polarising figure in charge of Nepal’s most powerful internal-security ministry. These concerns preceded not just his resignation but hovered around since before he even ran for the polls.

These concerns, grave as they are, have never been subjected to a comparable process of independent scrutiny, unlike the assets and business-related ones. A committee may have closed one file—in assuming that they did their job fairly—but the file that gave rise to the original objections remains largely unopened, or rather, uncreated.

Democracies sometimes treat, rather mistakenly, exoneration in one matter as a substitute for scrutiny in all others. Yet a politician may be cleared of one allegation—and behave as if they won a referendum on the entirety of their politico-moral persona—while serious concerns remain regarding their conduct, judgment, relationships, public rhetoric or suitability for a particular office.

The aftermath of the Mueller Report in the United States illustrates a recurring democratic mistake. After Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to establish a criminal conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia, many Trump supporters treated that finding as a complete vindication of his presidency. Yet, critics argue that the broader concerns surrounding his conduct, rhetoric and approach to democratic institutions remained unanswered. The episode serves as a reminder that the resolution of one controversy does not automatically exonerate the office-bearer of the remaining controversies. Simply put, a favourable finding on a specific allegation may answer one question while leaving many more untouched. And the onus lies on the (civil) society to not let the remaining questions fade away amidst the celebrations of the more talked-about victory.

The issue, therefore, is not whether Gurung is guilty of a specific offence, nor is it whether he possesses qualities that many uncritical citizens find admirable. The issue is whether a person facing multiple unresolved questions should be entrusted with the Home Ministry before those questions have been independently examined, especially when the police—who have/had been investigating the Gen Z protests—report to the Home Ministry. Gurung has been identified as a person of interest not only by segments of the public and media relying on publicly available footage and his own statements, but also in findings that prompted the National Human Rights Commission to explicitly recommend further investigation into him. Reappointing him to the government makes a mockery of the international human rights standards.

Democracies depend not merely on good intentions or popular decisiveness but also on procedures. The purpose of constitutional government is to ensure that decisiveness adheres to the principles of the rule of law while also remaining subject to scrutiny. Democratic societies often become willing to tolerate concerns about accountability when confronted with leaders who promise rapid change. Popularity begins to compensate for scrutiny, admiration begins to substitute for investigation, and declarations like “reopening the ‘file’ of the 2001 Royal Palace Massacre” awestruck the citizenry into ignoring the unscrutinised controversies of the populist leader.

Lapse of whose judgement?

In legal-rational authority, to cite Max Weber, offices are entrusted according to impersonal standards and institutional criteria—in contrast to Balen’s patrimonial system, where the decisive question becomes whether an individual enjoys the confidence of the ruler. The first appointment can still be defended as an exercise of the PM’s political judgment. But a reappointment that occurs after multiple controversies have emerged and public debates have taken place must not be as easily excused, as the PM has had ample opportunity to investigate and deliberate.

Gurung’s reappointment, therefore, becomes a question about the (lapse of) judgment of the PM himself, as he has repeatedly stood by his controversial lieutenant despite sustained, unsolved criticisms. This is comparable to Narendra Modi’s continued reliance on Amit Shah, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s unwavering confidence in Hakan Fidan, Viktor Orbán’s repeated promotion of close associates facing persistent allegations and Benjamin Netanyahu’s recurrent efforts to retain Aryeh Deri—in all of whose cases, the controversy gradually ceased to concern only the subordinate official and became a question about the judgment of the leader who repeatedly chose to retain them.

Guillermo O’Donnell described a related phenomenon through his concept of delegative democracy, in which elected leaders begin treating electoral legitimacy as a substitute for ongoing scrutiny. Once elected, they act as though public endorsement relieves them of the obligation to continuously justify their choices. Yet elections were never intended to replace accountability; they were intended to coexist with it. Kim Lane Scheppele’s work on autocratic legalism offers a similar warning, as modern democratic erosion rarely occurs through the outright rejection of legality. Instead, they reward loyalties, establish investigation committees, yet keep the reports murky, and then use those processes to confer legitimacy upon outcomes that may leave broader concerns untouched. The danger, therefore, is not necessarily the complete absence of investigations, but the possibility that narrowly framed investigations come to substitute for broader scrutiny.

That is why the current debate should not focus exclusively on what the committee found regarding one controversy, even when the reports are publicly released and are found to be good. It should also ask what the committee was not asked to investigate. Exoneration in one controversy should not become a shield against scrutiny in other faded controversies. No constitutional system requires courage to investigate those whom nobody likes. The true test comes when citizens are asked whether accountability should remain necessary even for those they admire.

Gurung—who has faced some unfair (and even racist) criticisms from some quarters targeting his ethnicity and his populist, hoi polloi-style—deserves neither persecution nor exemption. He deserves what every citizen deserves: fairness, due process and the presumption of innocence. However, the citizenry, too, deserves answers to unresolved questions before those entrusted with investigating others are themselves entrusted with the state’s most sensitive offices. In the euphoria surrounding Gurung’s ‘apparent’ vindication, there is a danger that Nepal will confuse, in amnesia, the resolution of one controversy with the resolution of all controversies, and questions that seemed urgent in March suddenly appear inconvenient in June. Yet, accountability requires precisely the discipline to continue asking difficult questions, even when public sentiment has moved on.