Leader of Nepal’s largest communist party named new prime minister

Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli has become the new PM after the country’s two largest parties form a coalition.

The leader of Nepal’s largest communist party, Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, has been named the prime minister after shaping a new alliance in the country’s turbulent parliament.

A statement on Sunday by the office of the president said the 72-year-old Oli will take his oath of office on Monday, the fourth time he is becoming the prime minister.

He is replacing Pushpa Kamal Dahal, whose 18-month-old government collapsed on Friday after Oli’s party, the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, agreed to a new coalition with the centre-left Nepali Congress party.

Oli will now have to succeed where his predecessor failed earlier this week, securing a vote of confidence in parliament to continue in office within a month. The two parties have more than half the members in parliament required for a majority vote.

Under the new power-sharing arrangement, Oli and the Nepali Congress party’s president Sher Bahadur Deuba, 78, will rotate in holding the prime minister’s post until the next general election in 2027.

Oli entered politics as a teenager and spent 14 years in prison for campaigning to overthrow the monarchy. He joined the communist party in 1987 after his release and steadily rose through the ranks.

First elected as prime minister in 2015, Oli was re-elected in 2018 and reappointed briefly in 2021 in Nepal’s parliament, which has seen several governments come and go in the past decade.

Nepal became a federal republic in 2008, more than a decade after a civil war culminated in bringing the Maoists into government and abolishing the monarchy.

But governments have been unstable since, with the Himalayan nation of about 30 million people facing escalating economic challenges, especially after the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Nepal’s tourism industry.

Known for his nationalist views in a country dwarfed by its giant neighbours China and India, Oli is seen as more favourable to Beijing.