Nepal’s lawmakers on Sunday chose a new prime minister who must reunite a country deeply divided over a fresh constitution, tackle crippling fuel shortages and kick-start reconstruction after two devastating earthquakes.
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Mr Oli served as the Home Minister in 1994/95 after the restoration of democracy in 1990 and later became the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs during the interim government in 2006. Parliament speaker Subash Nemwang announced that Khadga Prasad Oli had received 338 votes from a total 597 members in the chamber.
“There are groups that are dissatisfied with the constitution, we have to address their demands”, said Oli, who needs a simple majority of 299 votes in the 598-member parliament to win.
“Our country has been devastated by the quake”. But India says it will wait to see what happens.
Nearly six months after the earthquakes, the focus on party politics has drawn criticism.
It was meant to end centuries of inequality in the impoverished nation but has sparked deadly protests in Nepal’s southern plains, where ethnic minorities oppose plans to divide the country into seven federal provinces.
“The protests are likely to radicalise even further if [Oli] doesn’t change his views”, Supreme Court lawyer Dipendra Jha said, Al Jazeera reported. Additionally, it is unclear how exactly the new prime minister will choose to navigate the constitutional crisis. The public will also have high expectations. The extreme-left pro-monarchy Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal party is likely to be the major constituents of the new cabinet.
With a new Nepalese Prime Minister assuming office on Sunday, India reached out to its Himalayan neighbour amid the current strain in ties between the two nations after Nepal adopted its new Constitution.
Nepal’s agitating Madhesi groups today said they will withdraw all their protest programmes except the blockade on the Indian border, in view of the upcoming festival of Vijaya Dashami though there was a few improvement in the supply of fuel from India.
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India has supported the protests and imposed an informal blockade on its landlocked northern neighbor, which has severely impacted the flow of goods into Nepal, including essential supplies such as petrol, cooking gas and medicine.
