Oli’s long game

As always, the UML chief has made a calculated move. Yet he controls only part of a large political puzzle.

CPN-UML Chairperson KP Sharma Oli’s political paper presented at the party’s National Representatives Council meeting in Lalitpur on Saturday makes a case against left-right political polarisation. In the paper, the UML chief rules out a broader left unity. “Cooperation among like-minded parties is what we need” in order to solve the country’s pressing problems, he says in the report. His report comes at a time when Prime Minister and Maoist Centre chair Pushpa Kamal Dahal has been trying to forge a ‘socialist coalition’ with smaller outfits like the CPN (Unified Socialist), the Janata Samajbadi Party and the CPN (Netra Bikram Chand). There are two, contradictory calculations at play. While the UML is looking to be the single largest party in the 2027 general elections on the back of its solid organisational base, the far less organised Maoist Centre seems to be in an existential crisis as an electoral force. Dahal and top Maoist leaders fear that unless a wider communist coalition can soon be forged, preferably under the Maoist supremo, the party, currently with 32 seats in the national legislature, could otherwise be wiped off the electoral map.