Stunted republic

As implementers of new order face discredit, the system they helped bring is being questioned too.

There could not have been a bigger contrast. As the country marked the 18th Republic Day last Thursday, pro-monarchy forces were banding together in Kathmandu for a rally to restore the Hindu kingdom. On the same day, the CPN-UML, the party of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and a solidly pro-republican outfit, took out its own rally, with Oli calling on his UML party cadres to ‘seize Kathmandu’. While both the gatherings were sparsely attended, the consensus was that the pro-monarchy rally was much bigger, with around 5,000 participants. The inability of the UML, the biggest elected communist force in the country, to summon even a couple of thousand protesters is perhaps a sign of its declining popularity. The common perception is that other big pro-republican parties like the Nepali Congress and the CPN (Maoist Centre) are also on a decline. The first Constituent Assembly elected in 2008 had formally abolished monarchy and established the new republican order. The assembly elected Ram Baran Yadav as the country’s first President, thereby ending the centuries-old tradition of the head of the state’s position being occupied by a hereditary monarch. Later, the 2015 national charter institutionalised the republic.