There’s a pattern to Nepal’s seemingly chaotic political theatre. Between them, Messrs. Dahal, Deuba and Oli have taken turns in the prime minister’s office since 2015. No prime minister lasts long, but the high office rotates among these politicians. It’s Oli’s fourth tenure as prime minister and should Deuba follow suit, he will do so for a record sixth term.

And each time, a new government takes office, the charade continues. The new political successor takes not-so-kind digs at his predecessor, decides to forget his own chequered past, declares the previous prime ministerial tenure ineffectual, and then, miraculously, shakes hands to form a new government.

Though he sounded deeply disappointed and bitter in his pre-vote speech before the floor test last week, Prachanda by now must have given himself a pat on the back for managing to stay in office as long as he did. After all, the Maoist party holds only 32 seats in the 275-member Pratinidhi Sabha, the lower house of parliament.

On Friday, Dahal received a measly 63 votes - 32 from his own Maoist party, 21 from the Rastriya Swatantra Party, and 10 from the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist). It was a foregone conclusion once the CPN-UML had withdrawn from the government days before the vote. But that didn’t stop Prachanda from facing the floor test, instead of heeding widespread calls for resignation. He was perhaps hoping for a last-minute turnaround given the volatility of Nepal’s politics. However, his fate was sealed, with the two largest parties - the Nepali Congress (with 88 seats) and the CPN-UML (with 79) – standing against him. In all, 194 lawmakers voted against the confidence vote.

What next?

In justifying their unlikely alliance, the Nepali Congress and CPN-UML have argued that a major reason behind their coming together was to ensure political stability. While such an assertion may sound reasonable at first, the coalition between a communist party and a centrist force with entirely different political backgrounds is bound to have inherent dissonance.

Nepal’s communist parties have very similar ideological orientations - historical suspicions towards India and the West, failure to embody the changed international context to re-imagine national interests, and fixation with old-school nationalism, among others. Furthermore, their cadre base overlaps at the grassroots and, also at various societal fronts – such as left-leaning writers.

These centripetal factors are constantly at work to bring them together. Hence, many within the communist parties – the CPN-UML, Communist Party (Maoist Center), Communist Party (Unified Socialist) and those who are not represented in Parliament – believe there is a constant rallying cry for communist unification. After the 2017 elections, Nepal’s major communist forces did come together, with the Nepal Communist Party controlling close to a two-thirds majority in the federal Parliament and six of the seven provincial governments.

Their ideological and political kinships notwithstanding, the communist parties, however, have a long history of disunity and disintegration in Nepal, dating back to the 1950s. In 2018, when the communist forces last came together to form the Nepal Communist Party, the political behemoth imploded within three years. Oli, who was both the prime minister and chairman of the NCP, is seen as a deeply polarising figure, including in communist circles.

External factor

Beijing has historically been comfortable with a government run by a communist party. An alliance of communist parties as the ruling coalition would be its second choice – as the outgoing coalition dominated by the UML-Maoist party. Meanwhile, New Delhi and West must be somewhat relieved with the Nepali Congress’ return to power.

The NC gets home and foreign ministries and seven more in a possible 22-member Cabinet while UML will head eight ministries and the rest will go to smaller parties who have supported the NC-UML coalition. That means Prime Minister Oli will be more amenable to compromises, unlike in the heydays of 2018-20 when the Nepali Communist Party enjoyed a “supermajority” and projected itself as a nationalist force.

After India imposed a border blockade on Nepal in 2015-016, Oli took a stridently nationalist stance, which gave his party and the Left Alliance (which brought CPN-UML and the Maoist party together) massive electoral success in 2017. In 2020, six months after India unveiled its new political map placing Kalapani, Nepal’s northwestern trijunction with India and China, within its borders, the then Oli government unveiled Nepal’s new political map by incorporating the region within its territory, a major irritant in Nepal-India ties to this day.

Two years later, in 2022, when Nepal went to election the nationalist card failed to excite the voters. The election resulted in a hung parliament, demonstrating the fact that politics is in a state of flux. It’s common knowledge that the electorate is far from happy with the traditional parties, but the new ones are yet to emerge as a decisive force, a scenario that tells that the political dust is far from settled.

Akhilesh Upadhyay is a Senior Fellow at Strategic Affairs Center at IIDS, a Kathmandu-based think tank. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Kathmandu Post. The views expressed are personal.