About a month ago, K. P. Sharma Oli was officially declared Nepal’s new prime minister, ushering an end to the much-awaited denouement to the prolonged, if not excruciating, process of political transition. Oli, who is widely considered to be a veteran communist politician, was inaugurated as the 41st prime minister of the Himalayan nation on 15 February 2018 just two months after the elections all came to a closure. The formation of a new government was delayed due to the need to hold elections for the National Assembly, the upper house in Nepal’s bicameral parliament.
This new political appointment for the highest public office is expected to set in motion a pacifist odyssey of security and economic prosperity in the Himalayan nation. The 65-year-old leader who spent more than a decade in imprisonment during the “Panchayat era” for his democratization activism, was elected as chairman of CPN-UML just four years ago. In 2015, almost immediately following the promulgation of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly regarding the nation’s newly amended constitution, Oli held the office of prime minister for a little less than year—and displaced when his government coalition dissolved.
Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal (Photo: Facebook)
In Oli’s second stint, however, he is widely considered by commentators and the media as a political strongman with the most power in Nepal’s recent history as the Left Alliance is going to dominate all the country’s power centers. In addition to holding the posts of president, vice president, prime minister, speaker and deputy speaker, this ruling party that is the Left Alliance also controls both houses of parliament—the House of Representatives and National Assembly—as well as the provincial governments in six out of Nepal’s seven provinces.
Oli, who has built an image as “a man of his word,” has a host of challenges to overcome as the new prime minister of Nepal. With the recent elections signaling the end of the political transition that began in 2006, Oli’s main challenge is fulfilling the people’s quest for peace, stability and development. Fed up with chronic political instability, people are expecting economic development and stability thanks to the new Left Alliance’s massive majority. One reason the coalition was able to secure nearly a two-thirds majority was their slogan: prosperity and development.
The first challenge for the new Oli administration will be to manage the newly created seven provinces under the federal set up. Due to a lack of budget and resources, these provinces will have to depend on the central government for general expenditures and other development projects. And it’s not only the provincial governments as 743 local bodies are also facing budgetary problems. In the face of internal revenues shortage, the Oli administration will have to garner international support to manage both the provincial and local governments. Oli, who has often been accused of being not committed to federalism, now shoulders the daunting task of managing Nepal’s fledgling federal structures.
Another challenge for the Oli-led administration will be meeting the high expectations of the people. With a stable government, the first Nepal has enjoyed in over a decade, there are hopes that more jobs will be created, new industries will be set up, and infrastructure—such as roads, airports, and hydropower projects—will be built. On a daily basis, thousands of youths go abroad to find work, which demonstrates the scale of unemployment that country is facing. As youths are increasingly flying abroad, there are other spillover effects; fertile agriculture land in villages is turning barren, the Left Alliance government will have to bring more foreign investment to the country along with building a skilled and trained workforce.
Most important among some of the goals of the Oli administration is a sound, effective, and balanced foreign policy. And parliamentary diplomacy is an area of potential improvement. Oli needs to maintain balanced and cordial relations with both neighbors: India and China. This is an uphill battle. While managing to bring in more capital through foreign direct investment and increasing development cooperation with other partner countries, Nepal’s new government will have to reach out to Western and European countries along with other Asian countries like Japan and Australia, which are major development partners of Nepal.
Oli has already taken some steps to improve ties with India, which soured during his first stint as prime minister back in 2015. During his earlier campaign a few years ago, he promised to increase ties with China and reduce “dependence” on India—a theme that took on even more importance after an unofficial blockade stopped daily necessities from entering Nepal from India. In response, Oli signed a trade and transit agreement with China, ending India’s monopoly over the supply system. Similarly, Oli reiterated his commitment to link Nepal with China by rail. Nepal has already signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and Oli has promised to select BRI projects without any delay.
But so far, there has been little visible progress on the implementation of those agreements. Might parliamentary diplomacy offer the solution to the domestic pressure that is building on Oli’s executive promises? Observers are keenly watching the Himalayan nation’s foreign policy to see how well he can mitigate the challenges of his time—and of his nation’s future.
By MSEAP Cyber Secretariat (mseap@assembly.go.kr) |
