Winning a mandate is easy but maintaining it is full of challenges, Nepal’s Opposition leader Gagan Kumar Thapa told NDTV today, while speaking of the rapper-turned-Prime Minister Balen Shah.
The 36-year-old came to power barely six months ago on a massive popular mandate following the Gen Z protests and violence. But now, criticism against him is growing after his government’s foreign policy became clear and incidents related to law and order surfaced.
“I would urge them to go back to our history. It’s not the first time some leader of some party has got this strong mandate… What our history teaches us, that winning a mandate is one thing, but making it a success is a different thing,” Thapa, the president of the Nepali Congress, said at the NDTV World Anviksha Summit.
About what went wrong, Thapa, without naming anyone, cited arrogance, undermining of institutions and undervaluing accountability.
“You start to think that I am the most powerful, and you start undermining the institutions. And you start undervaluing the public accountability… I suggest that RSP also learn from the failures of history,” he said.
Lessons, he added, may also come from voters and the young supporters of the party. “They will tell what is going wrong. They will probably give you better advice,” he added.
Shah, he added, is also struggling because he promised a quick fix. Quick fixes were not the problem, “there are some very structural problems. There are some very cultural problems. We need to see in the whole context,” he added.
As for his own party, he said the writing was on the wall for long.
“Even before September 8, we raised this issue. We were continuously warning our senior leaders that there is a growing frustration among people,” Thapa said. Because of his travels, he said it was easy to sense the mood of the young people.
“They were so angry. And the main reason for their anger was that we are not getting enough opportunities here. And why are we not getting enough opportunities? Due to bad governance. And bad governance is equal to the wrong politics, wrong political choices. So there was a clear message. It just didn’t come out one fine day. There was a clear message,” he said.
