Mend or end

The UML’s continued denial of the sanctity of people’s verdict will put it in an existential crisis.

The CPN-UML has doggedly resisted internalising the sea-change brought about by the Gen Z uprising. As a result, the second-largest party in the previous House of Representatives was routed in the March 5 polls, losing more than two-thirds of its seats to now be limited to 25. Its popular votes also went down by half. Yet the party is still unwilling to accept the real reason for its abrupt downfall. It is rather happy to spread conspiracy theories about the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s victory. Addressing the first meeting of the House of Representatives on April 2, the party’s parliamentary party leader Ram Bahadur Thapa linked actors like the Nepali Army, the bureaucracy, the Sushila Karki government, the Gauri Bahadur Karki Commission, the Barbara Foundation, and other institutions and figures with the RSP’s ‘unprecedented’ victory. But he didn’t see any fault with his party or its widely discredited leadership.