100 days of the Balen government
On everything that the Balen-RSP government has done in the last three months
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening from Kathmandu. This is Issue 245 of Kalam Weekly, the only newsletter you need to keep updated with everything happening in Nepal.
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The deep dive: 100 days of the Balen government
(Image: Subhin Rajkarnikar)
Sunday, July 5, will officially mark 100 days of the Rastriya Swatantra Party government led by Prime Minister Balen Shah. The initial 100 days are considered the ‘honeymoon period’ for a new government, as that is when it has the most political goodwill from both its supporters and detractors. It is also the time when even the opposition is generally willing to give the government the benefit of the doubt before sustained criticism begins. Although this 100-day evaluation began in the United States with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1993, it has since evolved into a global trend, including here in Nepal, with the media and citizens both reviewing the government’s ability to deliver on its promises and assessing the tone of governance for the coming five years.
With the Balen Shah government’s honeymoon period coming to an end on Sunday, let’s take a critical look back at his three months of governance and attempt to ascertain what the next five years under Shah might look like.
Arrests galore but little follow-through
The Shah government made an immediate splash with the arrests of former Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli and former Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak a day after it took office. Acting on the orders of Home Minister Sudan Gurung, the Nepal Police took both Oli and Lekhak into custody on March 28 for investigation regarding their complicity in the carnage of September 8, the first day of the GenZ protests last year. Although ostensibly acting on the recommendations of the Gauri Bahadur Karki-led investigation committee, the arrests were conducted without due process. Most notably, the government did not seek a court-approved arrest warrant for either Oli or Lekhak. It relied instead on Section 9.6 of the Criminal Procedure Code, which allows investigating authorities themselves to issue an “urgent warrant of arrest” if there is a fear that the accused might flee or destroy evidence. Article 9.7 prohibits any investigation before the urgent warrant is approved by the courts.
The argument that Oli and Lekhak would flee or destroy evidence does not hold water. Both are aging individuals who spent their entire lives in Nepal and had shown no inclination to flee. They were also no longer in power, so had few opportunities to destroy evidence. Nevertheless, they were arrested on a Saturday with the government making a big show of things. The Kathmandu District Court approved the urgent warrant, and Oli and Lekhak were consigned to police custody. Twelve days later, on April 9, both were released on orders from the Supreme Court, responding to a habeas corpus petition filed by their wives. Nearly three months later, no charges have been filed, and there has been no official update on the investigation against Oli and Lekhak for negligence in the shooting deaths of 19 unarmed protesters.
The Shah government pursued a similar modus operandi when arresting numerous prominent businessmen – Deepak Bhatta of Infinity Holdings, Shanker Agrawal and Sulav Agrawal of the Shanker Group, Shekhar Golchha of the Golchha Organization, and CEO Jyoti Prakash Pandey of Nepal Investment Mega Bank. Bhatta, the Agrawals, and Golchha were all arrested in connection with the same money-laundering case, while Pandey was arrested for alleged fraud and the illegal auction of property confiscated by the Nepal government. Shanker Agrawal, Golchha, and Pandey were all released on bail after just a few days, but Bhatta and Sulav Agrawal remain in police custody, with their detention extended numerous times by the courts. On June 17, a bench of the Special Court, which adjudicates corruption and money laundering cases, denied them both bail. Once again, the arrests of these prominent individuals made headlines, but it remains unclear how the investigation or the case against them is proceeding. Bhatta has been in custody since April 2, and over 90 days later, there is no clarity on when formal charges will be filed.
Most recently, on June 22, former Finance Minister and CPN-UML vice-chair Bishnu Poudel was also taken into custody in connection with the same Deepak Bhatta money-laundering case. Paudel remains in jail, his custody having been extended on Thursday by six more days.
These kinds of corruption and money-laundering cases can take months, if not years, to investigate, but the manner in which the Shah government has made a spectacle of these arrests has left many uncomfortable. Whether one agrees politically with Oli and Lekhak or not, they too have rights under the constitution. Due process cannot be violated for the sake of political expediency or to score political points with the voter base. Home Minister Sudan Gurung has also acted rashly, putting up a tally on his social media each time someone was arrested, as if he were settling a score. It is actions like these that have led the UML to accuse the Shah government of enacting a political vendetta. If individuals like Oli, Lekhak and Bhatta are truly guilty, they must be declared so by a court of law, not by the executive or the court of public opinion.
Squatters evicted but no resettlement yet
On April 25, the Shah government began its mass eviction of squatters from along the banks of the Bagmati River. Security forces, primarily the Nepal Police and Armed Police Force, forcibly evicted squatters, destroying their homes using construction excavators and bulldozers. The government argued that squatters had been illegally settled on the banks of the river for decades and that many of them were not ‘genuine’ landless squatters. Human rights organizations and activists, however, cautioned that proper arrangements needed to be made for their relocation before evicting the landless. The government went ahead with its plan, moving the squatters to temporary housing across the Kathmandu Valley.
The government had pledged to provide alternative housing for those evicted within 10 to 15 days, but over two months later, they remain in temporary accommodations. The government is still in the midst of validating who is a ‘genuine squatter’ and who are simply ‘unmanaged dwellers’ with land and property elsewhere in the country. Only genuine landless squatters are eligible for permanent housing and land relief. When the opposition questioned the Shah government over its inaction and accused it of cruelly treating the poorest and most vulnerable citizens, Prime Minister Balen Shah replied that a problem 35 years in the making could not be solved overnight. “It will take as long as it takes,” he said.
Back when the eviction and demolition plan was first announced, numerous human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the International Commission of Jurists, and UN Special Rapporteurs, expressed concern about the lack of clarity regarding permanent resettlement for those evicted. Now, it seems those fears were not unwarranted. The government clearly had no plan for permanent resettlement then and doesn’t seem to have one now. Evicted squatters were ordered to vacate temporary housing by June 26. Verified squatters were given a one-time payment of Rs 25,000 and were eligible to receive Rs 15,000 every month for three months towards rent, which is again supposed to be temporary while the government figures out permanent housing. After mass outcry that this was not nearly enough time to seek rental arrangements, the government extended the deadline by a week, up to July 3.
This eviction drive also seems to have been motivated more by reprisal than a genuine desire to alleviate the squatter problem. Balen Shah had attempted to evict these squatters in November 2022 when he was mayor of Kathmandu. At the time, he was rebuffed by squatters themselves, who protested violently against the unarmed Kathmandu city police. The courts too halted the evicted, ordering the city to arrange resettlement before evictions. Perhaps Shah felt slighted then. So when he came in as prime minister with an even larger mandate, the eviction was one of his very first actions, despite the lack of a resettlement plan. Now, over 1,400 squatters no longer have any homes and have to seek temporary rental accommodations in a city that is notoriously hostile to the poor and Dalits when it comes to rent. If this problem remains unresolved for much longer, it will mark one of the most visible failures of the Shah government.
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Governance reform but unelected advisors run rampant
Since election campaigning, the Rastriya Swatantra Party has been largely focused on two major promises – good governance and better service delivery. Ever since it was elected, the Shah government has enacted numerous policies, primarily directed at cutting the fat from the government, to achieve these ends. The first step that Shah took upon taking office was to cleanse the bureaucracy of partisan politics by enacting a blanket ban on party-affiliated trade unions for civil servants. The ban, which came into effect through an ordinance rather than a law passed by parliament, disbanded 12 civil service unions but also applied to unions for students and for public school teachers. The government’s rationale was that public servants spent more time lobbying political parties for promotions and better postings than doing their work. This also allowed political parties to exercise undue influence on the bureaucracy, the state’s ‘permanent government.’ Instead of party affiliation, promotions and postings would now be based strictly on merit, the government said.
After banning unions, the government then moved to depute bureaucrats to postings across the country. Numerous senior joint secretaries and secretaries who had spent their entire careers in Singha Durbar’s corridors of power were suddenly posted to far-flung rural areas. Many chose to resign rather than move.
At the same time, the government issued an ordinance annulling all political appointments to public office, removing over 1,200 officials in one fell swoop. These included officials at Tribhuvan University, the Nepal Electricity Board, Nepal Airlines, BP Koirala Institute of Health Sciences, and the two transitional justice commissions. Then, in May, the government capped the number of ministries at 18 and began work on a new Civil Service Act that set a mandatory retirement age of 55 for bureaucrats. Although the bill has not yet been enacted, if it is, it will force over 10,000 serving civil servants into mandatory retirement.
The Shah government argues that all of these measures are meant to ensure that the state functions like a lean, well-oiled machine while reducing expenses such as salaries and allowances. However, they are also attempts to rein in the civil service, which has long functioned almost as an unelected parallel government that is always in power. A government led by the inexperienced RSP was bound to face resistance from a conservative and ossified bureaucracy, so Shah appears to be nipping that challenge in the bud. However, the changes that he is making are being enacted via ordinance, bypassing the legislative function of the elected Parliament. Despite having a near two-thirds majority, the RSP government is ruling by diktat, which is worrisome.
But even more concerning is that, at the same time, unelected bureaucrats are being removed, while another coterie of unelected advisors is running rampant in Singha Durbar. Prime Minister Shah’s personal secretariat, which primarily comprises his friends and loyalists rather than experts, has been functioning as a parallel government of its own. Bureaucrats complain that the prime minister’s advisors are increasingly dictating the work they should do. Even junior ministers are reportedly unable to meet Shah and are instead forced to meet and discuss issues of state with chief advisor Kumar Byanjankar, political advisor Asim Shah, Governance Advisor Sudeep Dhakal, and IT advisor Bibek Mishra.
Most recently, the almost dictatorial role of these advisors came to light in the scandal surrounding the international tender to print Nepali passports, which was awarded to two German companies. Shah’s advisors, as reported first by Setopati, summoned members of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority to Singha Durbar and forced them to lodge a corruption case against all those involved in the tender process. The commissioners were reportedly not allowed to leave for nine hours and were subjected to demeaning and threatening language by advisors Asim Shah, Bibek Mishra and Madhav Khanal. Reportedly, German Ambassador to Nepal Udo Volz, who had arrived at the Prime Minister’s Office to speak on behalf of the German companies, was also left waiting for hours. It was only after the direct intervention of Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal and the support of RSP President Rabi Lamichhane that the advisors backed off, at least for the moment.
Prime Minister Shah appears to be replacing one set of unelected power brokers with another. The Nepali public did not vote for Shah’s advisors, so they certainly should not be issuing orders and contradicting duly elected ministers. Shah’s advisors are just that: advisors to the prime minister, not empowered officials with the mandate to run the government. The manner in which they have treated senior officials and even ambassadors, if the reporting is accurate, is condemnable. There is a serious danger that these advisors will lead the RSP government to ruin by acting like tinpot dictators who feel all officials should just do what they say because they are part of Balen Shah’s team. Nepal’s civil service certainly needs an overhaul, no doubt, but Shah cannot cut down the bureaucracy on the one hand while allowing his personal friends and advisors to replace them as pseudo-ministers. That is not good governance; it is just cronyism.
Recalibrating foreign policy but the party takes the lead
On the foreign policy front, the Shah government has been largely circumspect. Prime Minister Shah has maintained a strict distance from any and all foreign visitors, refusing to meet with Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and United States Special Envoy for Central and South Asia Sergio Gor. Misri postponed his entire visit, but Gor, who is also US Ambassador to India, visited and met with Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal and RSP chair Rabi Lamichhane. Shah, however, has not completely shunned the international community. He has met with resident and visiting ambassadors, but never one-on-one, always speaking to a group. This is a marked break from the past where prime ministers were more than eager to meet with any ambassador or visiting foreign official, whether it be a foreign secretary, an assistant secretary of state, or even the chief of a foreign intelligence agency.
Shah has also maintained that he will not be making any foreign trips for at least a year. This, too, is a break from past practice, in which the first foreign visit of a new prime minister was closely watched. A visit to New Delhi was supposed to portend a tilt towards India, while a visit to Beijing was a tilt towards China. Although this was a rather simplistic interpretation, most Nepali prime ministers did make a beeline for India. Picking Beijing for the first visit was seen as a snub to the southern neighbor and invited covert political censure. By refusing all foreign invitations, Shah is maintaining strategic autonomy, biding his time and waiting to see how things play out.
Shah is not a very diplomatic political actor. His social media outbursts, especially the infamous obscenity-laced post insulting India, China and the United States, before he became prime minister, attest to his naivety. Last month, he made another geopolitical faux pas while speaking off the cuff in Parliament, saying that Nepal too had “encroached” on Indian land.
Besides his own shortcomings, his advisors are further complicating matters. Chief advisor Kumar Byanjankar called on British Ambassador to Nepal Rob Fenn in May, asking for help with documentation regarding Nepal’s claims to the disputed territories of Lipulek, Limpiyadhura, and Kalapani. Ambassador Fenn reportedly ‘indirectly’ told Byanjankar that the issue was a bilateral matter between Nepal and India, according to The Kathmandu Post. The question here is, why is an unelected advisor reaching out independently to an ambassador? Shah and Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal were insistent that government officials not meet privately with foreign envoys and that they go through the Foreign Ministry. Those rules don’t seem to apply to Shah’s praetorian guard.
The ongoing controversy surrounding the passport tender is now complicating matters with Germany. The prime minister’s advisors have reportedly accused the German companies Veridos and Muehlbauer of colluding with Nepali actors to receive the passport tender. Advisors even accused the Germans that their “machines do not work,” according to Setopati. The online portal reports that German engineers from Veridos showed advisors Asim Shah, Bibek Mishra and Madhav Khanal in person that the machines indeed do work. If there is one positive stereotype about the Germans, it is that they are painstakingly methodical and take pride in the impeccable quality of their equipment.
Nevertheless, despite the demonstration, under pressure from the prime minister’s advisors, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority named Veridos and Muehlbauer as defendants in a corruption case involving the passport tender. Although Nepali media reported that Germany had summoned the Nepali representative in Berlin and lodged a formal protest, the German Embassy in Kathmandu clarified that it had “invited” the Nepali representative for a meeting and no protest note was handed over.
While the Balen Shah team appears woefully inept at handling relations with foreign countries and its ambassadors, the RSP team, consisting primarily of party chair Rabi Lamichhane and Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal, is doing far better. Lamichhane visited India at the invitation of the Bharatiya Janata Party and received a hero’s welcome and meetings with everyone from Prime Minister Narendra Modi to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar. After Lamichhane, Khanal then visited India for a more substantive visit, focusing on connectivity, trade, and other bilateral issues. Khanal then flew to Beijing, where he met with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who pointedly said that “close neighbors are better than distant relatives.”
Like Delhi, Beijing too has concerns regarding the new RSP government. While India can rely on close people-to-people relations between the two countries, China, which operates more at the party level, found itself in a difficult position when the March elections swept all the traditional political parties out of power and ushered in the era of the RSP. Beijing views the RSP with skepticism, afraid that party leaders are more pro-West than the communists and socialists of the Congress, UML, and Maoists. Two RSP ministers – Foreign Minister Khanal and Finance Minister Swarnim Wagle – were educated in the United States, and Home Minister Sudan Gurung has ties to a shady group that calls itself ‘Tibetan Original Blood.’ The Chinese are also wary about the slew of US officials who have visited Nepal after the March election, worried that the West will use its clout to persuade the new dispensation in Kathmandu to tilt away from China.
So far, the RSP and the Shah government have given no indication that they are tilting this way or that. The official foreign policy line is to maintain equidistance and pursue Nepal’s longstanding non-alignment. Shah’s refusal to meet with foreign officials has rankled power centers and even commentators in Nepal who believe he should make exceptions for China, India, and the United States, especially officials like Sergio Gor, who have the ear of US President Donald Trump. I don’t share that belief. I believe it is perfectly fine for the prime minister to delegate foreign policy to his foreign minister and focus on domestic issues. There is no need for Shah to engage with Gor, Misri, or anyone else, as long as he is working in tandem with Foreign Minister Khanal. Diplomacy might be as much about visibility as substance, but given Shah’s track record of putting his foot in his mouth, perhaps it is best if he maintains his distance. Khanal, while not as erudite or well-spoken as India’s Jaishankar or China’s Wang Yi, is a perfectly capable representative and, by all indications, seems to be doing a decent job acting as Nepal’s spokesperson on international affairs.
Many things broken, but not much rebuilt
In the weeks after Balen Shah became prime minister, I had commented that the government was in its ‘move fast and break things’ phase. The phrase was coined by Mark Zuckerberg in the early 2000s and signaled Facebook’s prioritization of speed, experimentation and disruption over cautious planning and execution. The Shah government too moved quickly, disrupting existing power centers and established practices. It appeared to be in a rush to show the voting public that, unlike older governments, this one would do what it said it would. And in the last 100 days, it has moved faster than any government in recent memory, often circumventing democratic processes and ruling by diktat.
So far, the people appear to be with Balen Shah and the RSP. Public opinion is still largely positive, even though there has been grumbling over Shah’s refusal to address the public or even speak before Parliament, his preference for social media antics over actual engagement, his statement regarding Nepal’s encroachment of Indian land, and the outsize role his advisors are playing in governance. Despite these hiccups, Shah remains popular, with many continuing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But that goodwill will not last forever. The Nepali voting public is fickle and is quick to turn on parties and politicians that it sees as ineffective. Shah will always retain his fanatical followers who are quick to label any critics as “jholey,” but broader society that voted for the RSP will not be so tolerant.
In the mid-2010s, an older Zuckerberg transitioned the ‘move fast and break things’ motto to ‘move fast with stable infrastructure’. Not as catchy as the original but definitely a more mature philosophy. Now that the Shah government’s 100 days are over, it too needs to move past the destruction phase to the rebuilding or creation phase. Creative destruction is only successful when what is destroyed is replaced with something better, not just another iteration of the old. While some might argue that 100 days is still not enough time, it is enough time to look back and assess what worked and what did not. Shah and his team must be open to criticism from both the media and the opposition. We don’t want to see them fail; we just want them to do better. Lasting change does not come from the will of one man but from processes and institutions that long outlast those who set them in motion. An honest government that engages with the public, is receptive to criticism, and does not prioritize publicity over procedure would not just win the RSP another election but would fundamentally change how politics is done in Nepal.
Recommendations
Film: Shakti, an award-winning Nepali drama starring Shristi Shrestha, Menuka Pradhan & Maotse Gurung, written and directed by Nani Sahra Walker, watch it for free on Fawesome
Event: Open House by Sattya, at Sattya Media Arts Collective, Jhamsikhel, July 4
That’s all for this week. I will be back next Friday, in your inbox, with the next edition of Kalam Weekly.
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