Who to form next government?

As the elections to the House of Representatives and the Provincial assemblies are approaching nearer, national politics has massively polarised to two fronts—one ruling alliance led by the Nepali Congress, and the opposition alliance led by the CPN-UML.

Both alliances look odd if we look into the political ideologies of the parties associated with the two rival alliances.

When the NC, the oldest democratic party, forged an alliance with the ultra-leftist party, the CPN-Maoist Centre, the UML, another communist party, forged an alliance with pro-royalist partiesRPP led by Rajendra Lingden and RPP-Nepal led by Kamal Thapa. More surprising is that Kamal Thapa, who waged the movements for the restoration of the monarchy since 2007 is now a UML candidate with its election symbol sun. Komal Oli, who won the post of vice chair in the RPP a few years ago is also a UML candidate from Dang.

Interestingly, in the fiveparty alliance led by NC, three are communist parties—Maoist Centre, CPN (Unified Socialist) and Rastriya Janamorcha while Loktantrik Samajwadi Party led by Mahantha Thakur is a regional party. The three communist parties were a part of the UML-Maoist alliance in 2017 polls although the CPN (Unified Socialist), the breakaway faction of the UML, was not in existence then. From the UML front, two conservative parties— RPP and RPP-N- which are against the present political set-up and the constitution, and Janata Samajwadi Party-Nepal of Upendra Yadav, who is also against the constitution, are contesting the election by forging an alliance.

These odd alliances have been created when the parties focused more on power than the well-being of the people.

Although the RPP and UML have forged an alliance only in three districts, they can extend it to other districts by the time election day approaches. Moreover, with the UML-led alliance, the RPP and RPP-N are enemies and the RPP is applying every measure to defeat Kamal Thapa in Makwanpur. Likewise, Upendra Yadav, who was labelling the UML as a regressive political force until a month ago, is now in the UML-led alliance. Despite these odds, the parties are in the election fray to defeat the candidates of the rival alliance.

Although it will be too early to depict the election results, the ruling alliance is likely to win more seats than the alliance led by UML considering