The biggest loss by a legacy party that sent shockwaves across the Himalayan country came when RSP’s prime ministerial candidate Balendra Shah ‘Balen’ defeated KP Sharma Oli, chair of CPN-UML and four-time prime minister, with a huge margin in Jhapa-5 constituency, which was his and his party’s stronghold for years.
Among the three former prime ministers who contested the March 5 general election in Nepal, only Pushpakamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ managed to win his seat amid the RSP tsunami decimating the old guard in the Himalayan nation.
On Saturday, the Rashtriya Swatantrata Party (RSP), formed in 2022, is headed to a two-thirds victory by winning 120 of the 156 seats for which results have been declared as of 5:30 pm.
The biggest loss by a legacy party that sent shockwaves across the Himalayan country came when RSP’s prime ministerial candidate Balendra Shah ‘Balen’ defeated KP Oli, chair of CPN-UML and four-time prime minister, with a huge margin in Jhapa-5 constituency, which was his and his party’s stronghold for years.
In a proverbial David versus Goliath fight, Balen, 35, secured 68,348 votes against 74-year-old Oli’s 18,734 in the constituency in eastern Nepal’s Koshi province, where the former prime minister had remained undefeated for years.
The March 5 general elections were necessitated after Oli resigned on September 9 last year, following violent two-day protests by the youth-led Gen Z group against his government over corruption and a ban on social media.
Balen chose the Jhapa-5 constituency to take on Oli thus making it a direct fight between the conservative old guard versus the new face of hope.
Prachanda, 71, who is known for choosing a new constituency every election, had contested the March 5 election from Rukum East.
In 2007, Prachanda had won from Rolpa-2 and Kathmandu-10, then in 2013 he lost Kathmandu-10 but won from Siraha-5. In 2017, he won from Chitawan-3, then shifted to Gorkha-2 in 2022.
“Prachanda changed his constituency time and again seeking a safer one and this time he contested the election from remote Rukum East, one of the strongholds of the erstwhile Maoist party,” said Sunil Babu Pant, a former Parliament member.
“This time the former Maoist guerrilla commander has not only changed the constituency but also changed the party’s name to Nepali Communist Party,” he added.
But it was not just change of constituency that helped Prachanda. Months ahead of the polls, he dissolved the CPN-Maoist Centre, changed the name of the party to Nepali Communist Party (NCP) after merging two dozen fringe parties into it.
He is now the co-coordinator of the new party NCP.
Another former prime minister Madhav Nepal, 73, the co-coordinator of the NCP, lost in Rautahat-1 to RSP’s Rajesh Kumar Chaudhari.
Baburam Bhattarai, 71, another former prime minister and chair of Pragatishil Lokatantrik Party, had contested from Gorkha-2 constituency, but later withdrew his name from the race.
However, it was not just the heavyweights from the legacy political parties that faced defeats. The RSP dismantled many strongholds, pockets and core areas of Nepal’s two big parties, the Nepali Congress (NC) and the CPN-UML.
Some 11 office bearers of the CPN-UML suffered humiliating defeats at the hands of RSP candidates while more than half a dozen NC strongmen also lost the election, the EC data showed.
After the ouster of the Oli government in September, the major issues raised by Gen Z before and during the election campaign were anti-corruption, good governance, an end to nepotism, generational change in political leadership, etc.
“Legacy parties failed to convince voters for whom the major issues included fighting corruption and an end to nepotism apart from a generational change in political leadership of the Himalayan nation,” said Saraswatee Karmacharya, a journalist at Nepal Samacharpatra.
“And along with the parties, sank the political futures of the respective old leaders, who had resorted to musical chair politics over the last two decades. No wonder, they were rejected,” she added.
