As Prachanda readies to take over as Nepal prime minister on Wednesday, he’s got a lot on his plate

Nepal’s Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal is set to be elected the country’s 39th prime minister in Parliament on Wednesday.

Dahal, popularly known as Prachanda, is the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre). He will replace caretaker Prime Minister KP Oli, who resigned on July 24 ahead of a no-confidence vote that was necessitated after Prachanda withdrew support to the coalition that Oli led.

While presenting the no-confidence motion against Oli, Prachanda and the main Opposition Nepali Congress led by Sher Bahadur Deuba accused him of failing to maintain balanced relations with Nepal’s two neighbours – India and China.

Prachanda and Deuba have worked out a seven-point deal, which includes a power-sharing agreement till the next Parliamentary elections that are scheduled for December 2017.

As the Maoist leader readies to take over as prime minister for the second time – he also helmed the government in 2008 – there are questions whether the coalition he now heads will succeed in maintaining a balance in its relations with India and China. Also, will the new government be able to address the concerns of Nepal’s minorities who have been agitating for a more inclusive and representative Constitution?

Deals with China

It’s clear that Nepal’s next prime minister has his work cut out.

For starters, it won’t be easy to backtrack from implementing the trade and railway connectivity agreements that the Oli government signed with China in March during a state visit there.

The agreements were aimed at ending Nepal’s economic dependence on India and came in the wake of a five-month-long blockade on the India-Nepal border that New Delhi had tacitly supported, which led to crippling shortages of fuel, medicines and other crucial supplies in the country.

Notwithstanding the change in government, China seems keen that the pacts materialise. Soon after Oli resigned, Wu Chuntai, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, met Prachanda who is believed to have promised the envoy that his government would fulfil the commitments made by the previous government.

According to Oli’s aides, Chinese President Xi Jinping was also expected to visit Nepal by October where he was supposed to announce Chinese support to complete strategic railway projects.

It is usual practice for newly-elected Nepalese premiers to visit India on their first official trip abroad.

When Prachanda took over as prime minister in 2008, he first visited China for the Beijing Olympics. This was seen as a break from tradition. However, upon his return, at the airport itself, the Maoist leader said that his first “formal visit would begin in India.”

Some Nepalese diplomats have suggested that Prachanda should visit China, not India, this time to ensure that Xi’s visit is not cancelled.

Nepal’s political parties are dominated by the hill elites who have historically suppressed the country’s ethnic and linguistic minorities. After signing the trade and transit agreements with China, Oli had gained popularity among his constituents in the hill regions of the country.

With three sets of elections – local, provincial and central – expected to take place by December 2017, Prachanda will be wary of not following through with these agreements.

Being a Communist leader, Prachanda is also certain not to keep his Chinese comrades at a distance. But the direction he is inclined towards will only become clear after observing if he moves to implement the agreements signed with Beijing, and clears the way for Xi’s expected visit.

Relationship with India

The relationship between India and Nepal deteriorated significantly under Oli. The slide started after Nepal adopted its first post-monarchy Constitution last year, which was opposed by its ethnic and linguistic minorities who include the Madhesis, a term for several communities living in Nepal's central and eastern plains who have close ties to India, and the Tharus, an ethnic group indigenous to the plains.

These minorities fear the new statute will perpetuate the discrimination they have long faced.

New Delhi’s stance that Nepal must address the demands and aspirations of its minorities in its Constitution led to tensions between the two countries and pushed Nepal closer to China.

Although Nepal’s four major political parties were all on board regarding the Constitution, it was Oli who took the lead in wrapping up the Constitution writing process, leaving the demands of Madhesis and other minorities unaddressed. It was Oli who also rejected Indian foreign secretary S Jaishankar’s last-minute advice to delay the adoption of the Constitution.

The adoption of a Constitution that minorities felt excluded them triggered the economic blockade in the plains.

Relations with India deteriorated further when earlier this year, Oli became the first Nepali prime minister to return home from New Delhi without signing a joint statement during a state visit.

His government also recalled Nepalese ambassador to India, Deep Kumar Upadhyay, on charges of “anti-government activities” and cancelled a scheduled visit to Delhi and Ujjain of Nepal’s newly-elected President Bidhya Devi Bhandari.

This soured bilateral relations further and Oli was forced towards China, which perhaps contributed to his eventual ouster.

Complicated war-era cases

Maintaining a balance in Nepal’s relations with India and China isn’t the only pressing matter before Prachanda, there are a number of challenges awaiting his government. One of the biggest will be settling cases of transitional justice – a set of judicial and non-judicial measures implemented in order to redress the legacies of massive human rights abuses. In this case, it involves the decade-long civil war that ravaged Nepal between 1996 and 2006.

Prachanda was the chief of the Maoist guerrillas that fought state forces during this conflict.

Both Prachanda and his coalition partner Deuba are implicated in serious human rights violations dating back to the war. Several complaints are lodged against them and other leaders on charges of killing, kidnapping and torturing people.

More than 53,000 victims have filed complaints at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Another transitional justice body, the Commission on Enforced Disappeared Persons, has registered over 2,700 cases.

In the last week of June, Prachanda cancelled a visit to Australia at the last minute fearing that he would be arrested for war crimes.

Though Oli delayed settling war-era cases at the political level, when the Maoists threatened to topple his government two months ago, Oli and Prachanda reached a deal that included an agreement to withdraw war cases from the courts and offer amnesties to those accused of human rights abuses during the war.

But with Prachanda now set to take charge along with Deuba, his government’s granting of amnesty to top leaders or any others involved in human rights violations will lack credibility.

Oli was better positioned to credibly handle transitional justice as his party is not as deeply embroiled in rights violations.

Domestic challenges

Domestically, there is likely to be an easing of tension within Nepal.

The agitating Madhesi and Tharu parties, who welcomed Oli’s exit, have returned to Parliament and said that they were willing to rejoin the government once their demands were addressed in writing.

One of their major demands is the revision of federal boundaries. However, this will require the Constitution to be amended, which cannot be done unless Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) extends its support, and Oli has never been keen on accommodating these demands.

The agitating parties themselves are sharply divided on how to accommodate disputed districts in Nepal’s new federal set up. In this context, revising federal boundaries will remain a herculean task for the new government.