[Nepal has been through turmoil in recent years. A decade-long insurgency led by Maoist rebels left more than 17,000 people dead before a 2006 peace deal ushered in democracy. In April 2015, a series of earthquakes dealt another devastating blow, killing nearly 9,000 people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes.]
By Bhadra Sharma, Rajneesh
Bhandari and Kai Schultz
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A Communist Party of Nepal rally in Kathmandu on
Tuesday. Vote counting began shortly
after polls closed on Dec. 7, but the results
did not become clear until this week.
Credit Narendra Shrestha/European Pressphoto
Agency
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KATHMANDU,
Nepal — Communist parties in
Nepal with closer ties to neighboring China have emerged victorious in the
country’s largest democratic exercise ever.
A powerful political coalition of two
communist parties led by former prime ministers, Pushpa Kamal Dahal and K. P.
Sharma Oli, won a majority of the contested seats in two legislative bodies,
the Parliament and the Provincial Assembly.
Vote counting began shortly after polls
closed on Dec. 7, but the results did not become clear until this week. On
Friday, a spokesman for Nepal’s election commission said his office had to
tally up only a small number of votes.
The defeat of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur
Deuba’s governing Nepali Congress party is likely to have significant foreign
policy implications for Nepal, a landlocked country squeezed between India and
China.
Mr. Deuba’s government recently oversaw the
cancellation of an award granted by a Chinese company to develop a large
hydropower project in Nepal. Politicians say that decisions like that could be
reversed under the leadership of politicians like Mr. Oli of the Communist
Party of Nepal, who took a harder line against India when he served as prime
minister.
Nepal has been through turmoil in recent
years. A decade-long insurgency led by Maoist rebels left more than 17,000
people dead before a 2006 peace deal ushered in democracy. In April 2015, a
series of earthquakes dealt another devastating blow, killing nearly 9,000
people and destroying hundreds of thousands of homes.
When Nepal’s Constitution was finally adopted
in September 2015 after long, contentious delays, ethnic groups living along
the country’s southern border with India mobilized in deadly protests against
provisions that they saw as discriminatory against women, indigenous
communities and those from lower castes.
India also perked up. During the protests, a
five-month blockade was imposed along the border, pinching off a crucial supply
of medicine and construction materials flowing into Nepal. Thousands of people
who had lost their homes during the earthquakes shivered in tin shacks.
Many said India had spearheaded the blockade
because of its internal objections to the Constitution and as punishment for
the Kathmandu political establishment’s increasingly cozy relationship with
China, which has pumped millions of dollars into investment projects in Nepal.
Over the past couple of years, anti-India
sentiment has compounded in pockets of Nepal, though some observers say
concerns about geopolitical maneuvering by China and India are overplayed.
“If India fails to establish itself as a
credible development partner of Nepal, the Chinese will surely gain in
popularity,” said S. D. Muni, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Institute for
Defense Studies and Analyses.
The elections this month filled more than 800
seats in Nepal’s Parliament and state assemblies, with some voters in rural
areas walking for hours through mountainous Himalayan terrain to cast their
ballots.
A splinter political party led by Maoist
militants had threatened to derail the elections by planting land mines and
targeting civilians. Thousands of police officers were dispatched to polling
sites.
Voters said they were elated that the
elections took place at all, expressing cautious optimism that new political
leadership could offer stability to a country that has had 10 prime ministers
in less than a decade.
“I hope they’ll deliver what they have
promised,” said Prachandra Ram Shrestha, a 50-year-old entrepreneur.
The Nepal Communist Party, the Maoist party
responsible for the attacks, had called for the elections to be dismissed and
for Nepal’s parliamentary system to be replaced with a socialist one. But apart
from a bombing on Nov. 29 that killed one person, voting was mostly peaceful.
Rajendra Mahato, a leader of the smaller
Rastriya Janata Party Nepal, said that it was still unclear whether the newest
iteration of Nepal’s government has the latitude or political will to deliver
on campaign promises. Unresolved issues with the Constitution could still hold
the country back, he said.
“Protests haven’t ended,” he said.
Bhadra Sharma and Rajneesh Bhandari reported
from Kathmandu, and Kai Schultz from New Delhi.
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Kai Schultz on Twitter: @bhadrarukum, @RajneeshB and @Kai_Schultz.