The Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) promised to depoliticise Nepal’s public institutions, particularly universities, by replacing existing office bearers with appointments based on transparency, merit and integrity. However, recent Vice Chancellor (VC) appointments challenge this commitment. Lower-ranked candidates under the government’s own evaluation framework were chosen over higher-ranked individuals, despite concerns regarding their professional credibility, raising serious questions about whether the selection process was genuinely merit-based. Rather than demonstrating a merit-based process, the outcome raises a broader question: Has the Government of Nepal genuinely reformed the way it selects academic leaders, or has it simply redesigned the appearance of the process?

Initially, the VC selection process seemed like a meaningful departure from the past, utilising strategic plans, interviews, a published scoring framework and online public feedback to project fairness and transparency. Collectively, these measures projected the image of a government committed to procedural fairness and institutional transparency.

Yet the credibility of any selection process depends not on the sophistication of its procedures but on the consistency between those procedures and the outcome. Transparency in a democratic government does not require that the highest-scoring candidate always be selected. It does require that when governments depart from the framework they establish, they clearly explain why. Without that explanation, the public is left unable to understand whether the decision reflected legitimate judgment or political influence.

The process itself also raises questions that deserve careful public consideration. If the published scoring model was not intended to influence the final decision substantially, what purpose did it serve? If the government intended to demonstrate that political considerations would no longer shape university appointments, why have the outcomes renewed debate about political influence rather than academic leadership?

Equally important is the composition of the selection process itself. What qualifications were used in selecting the expert panel? Were these individuals the country’s foremost authorities in higher education governance and university administration, and on what basis were they entrusted with evaluating candidates who, in several cases, possessed decades of senior academic and administrative experience?

Finally, if stakeholder perspectives were considered valuable, why was consultation conducted through an unrestricted online survey rather than directed toward those with a direct institutional stake in the university, its faculty, researchers, students, alumni and administrative staff?

Public engagement is an important component of democratic governance, but participation strengthens institutional legitimacy only when it is meaningful. An unrestricted online survey may create the appearance of participation, but it does little to strengthen confidence in decisions involving specialised leadership.

The disappointment over the university appointments is significant because RSP had promised transparency, systems over personalities, and institutions over patronage. Whether the final appointments are justified or not, the process has raised many questions on whether RSP’s promises are being reflected in institutional practice.

The consequences extend well beyond a single appointment. It is about whether Nepal is building institutions that reward intellectual integrity, administrative competence and public service, or institutions that merely perform those values while operating according to a different set of rules. When governments invite accomplished academics to prepare detailed strategic proposals, participate in extensive interviews and compete under published evaluation criteria, they create a reasonable expectation that merit will play a central role in determining the outcome. If that expectation is later undermined, the damage is institutional rather than personal. Such a facade of transparency erodes public confidence more deeply than the opaque systems it was intended to replace.

This is perhaps the greatest cost of performative transparency. Every time governments ask professionals to devote their expertise to elaborate competitions without demonstrating that the published rules genuinely matter, the result is the gradual erosion of intellectual capital. Talented individuals begin to conclude that intellectual preparation, administrative experience and academic achievement are secondary to politics.

Nepal frequently speaks of reversing brain drain, strengthening higher education and building knowledge-based institutions. Those ambitions cannot be realised without public trust. Talented people do not commit their lives to institutions they believe are indifferent to merit. Nepal cannot simultaneously lament the departure of its brightest minds while creating appointment processes that leave many questioning whether professional excellence is genuinely rewarded. Intellectual integrity is sustained not through speeches about reform, but through institutions that consistently demonstrate, through their decisions, that merit matters.

Perhaps the deepest concern is that this culture extends beyond any one government or political party. It points to institutional structures that repeatedly reward loyalty over competence and discourage those who seek to serve through expertise and public service. It is the same old theatrics and game of power and hunger, just a change in the people. Whether it is the old guard or the new wave, the rot is not in the people at the top, but in the soil of the system itself.

Good people can never do good because the system is designed to suffocate them. Those who participated in good faith invested significant time, effort and preparation, believing that integrity, merit and genuine competition still held value within Nepal’s public institutions. If the outcome was ultimately shaped by considerations that outweighed the published process, then those efforts served little purpose beyond legitimising a decision whose reasoning remains unexplained.

Merit-based selection cannot coexist with opaque decision-making. This erodes hope for citizens who value public service, creating the perception that merit is secondary to political calculations. Ultimately, it discourages the principled, qualified individuals Nepal’s public institutions need to attract.

The single request to public leaders is simply this: Be honest.

Governments come and go. Political parties rise and fall. But institutions endure. Their legitimacy depends not on the promises leaders make, but on whether their actions consistently reflect the principles they proclaim.

If Nepal truly seeks to build world-class universities capable of retaining talented scholars, inspiring future generations and reversing the country’s persistent brain drain, then merit cannot simply be celebrated in speeches. It must be visible in the decisions that matter most. Because when the appearance of transparency becomes more important than transparency itself, it is not only merit that dies in the dark. Public trust dies with it.