Youthful Oli

Top party leaders’ claim to forever be around only breeds cynicism among the change-hungry public.

Ageing is a strange beast. It tends to creep up on you. One day you wake up, go to the mirror and can hardly recognise the wrinkly stranger who stares back. Your life, you realise, has passed you by, in a jiffy. Yet some folks age more gracefully than others. There is a sense of accomplishment. They have done what they needed to do in life, and they now must pass the weight of responsibility to younger generations. But for others, age is a cruel reminder of their perceived lack of accomplishments, and this set of people cannot accept that time has come to leave the stage for new actors. Divorced from reality, they like living in their own fantasy-land. In this context, CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli’s assertion on Friday that he is getting younger by the day and even his white hair is now turning black was an exercise in denialism. It was also his unique way of putting the likes of Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal—two former prime ministers from the UML that Oli named during a speech on Friday—in their place. Oli has also appeared uncomfortable with the idea of the return to the party of former President Bidya Devi Bhandari, ostensibly to lead her ex-party. In other words, Oli wants to cling on to his chairmanship, for as long as he can, by hook or by crook.