Nepal’s Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli was sworn in as Prime Minister on Monday after his communist party forged a coalition government with the centre-left Nepali Congress.
Oli, chief of the second-largest party in the parliament, the Communist Party of Nepal – Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), returns as prime minister for the fourth time.
“I, KP Sharma Oli, in the name of the country and people, pledge that I will be loyal to the constitution… and fulfil my duty as the prime minister,” Oli said as President Ram Chandra Poudel administered the oath of office.
First elected as prime minister in 2015, he was reelected in 2018 with a rare majority government, and then reappointed briefly in 2021 in Nepal’s often turbulent parliament.
His predecessor and former coalition government ally, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, lost a vote of confidence on Friday, barely 18 months after taking office.
Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla commander better known by his nom de guerre Prachanda (“The Fierce One”), was forced to step down after Oli’s party withdrew its support.
Oli instead forged a deal with Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress.
He has promised to yield the post to the former five-time prime minister Deuba, 78, later in the parliamentary term.
The country became a federal republic in 2008 after a decade-long civil war and a peace deal that saw the Maoists brought into government and the abolishment of the monarchy.
Since then, a revolving door of ageing prime ministers and a culture of horse-trading have fuelled public perceptions that the government is out of touch with Nepal’s pressing problems.