Nepal’s president appointed Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli as prime minister for a fourth time on Sunday, after his communist party forged a coalition government with the centre-left Nepali Congress.
“President Poudel has appointed KP Sharma Oli as the new prime minister of Nepal,” Kiran Pokharel, press adviser to President Ram Chandra Poudel, told AFP. Oli, 72, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), will be sworn into office on Monday, Pokharel added.
First elected as prime minister in 2015, Oli was reelected in 2018 and then reappointed briefly in 2021 in Nepal’s often turbulent parliament. His predecessor and former coalition government ally, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, lost a vote of confidence on Friday, barely 18 months after taking office. Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla commander better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda (“The Fierce One”), was forced to step down after Oli’s party withdrew its support.
Oli instead forged a deal with Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress. He has promised to yield the post to the former five-time prime minister Deuba, 78, later in the parliamentary term.
Nepal became a federal republic in 2008 after a decade-long civil war and a peace deal that saw the Maoists brought into government and the abolishment of the monarchy. Since then, a revolving door of ageing prime ministers and a culture of horse-trading have fuelled public perceptions that the government is out of touch with Nepal’s pressing problems. Nepal’s next general elections are due in 2027.
In a Himalayan republic of about 30 million people, overshadowed by giant neighbours India and China, Oli previously trod a fine balance between the rivals, cordial to both but reaching out to Beijing to decrease Nepal’s dependency on New Delhi. Its economy has struggled since the coronavirus pandemic, which devastated the vital tourism industry and dried up remittances from the huge number of Nepalis working abroad.
