Six months after Gen-Z protests turned fatal and helped topple the government, Nepal has held its general elections for the federal parliament seats. The Rastriya Swatantra Party (Independent Party) took a sweeping lead with 125 seats in the parliament.
Baldwin students of Nepali descent interviewed for this story said they are pleased with these results.
The Rastriya Swatantra Party is fairly new, having been founded in 2022 by former TV star Rabi Lamichhane. RSP was founded on his dissatisfaction with Nepal’s political systems, and the public’s shared dissent allowed it to become the fourth-largest political party in Nepal in the 2022 elections.
The future prime minister is 35-year-old Balendra Shah, an engineer and former rapper. Senior Nirmala Baral said that too much attention is being drawn to his former rapping career.
“I feel like a lot of people brush over his educational background and focus on the rapper part. It makes the stories more interesting, but it also takes away his credibility.”
Shah completed a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in structural engineering. Baral believes that those degrees will help in reconstruction efforts and urban development, which the country desperately needs.
Shah believed the same. In May 2017, he posted on Facebook that he wouldn’t be voting in that year’s elections because he was not a candidate, according to an article by The Kathmandu Post. “I did my (bachelor’s) in civil engineering, I am on half way to master’s of structural engineering. I know how to build a nation. (I’ll) vote next time and vote (for) myself. I will develop my nation.”
He was elected as Kathmandu’s mayor in 2022 as an independent — the first ever independent to win such a position. After the Gen-Z protests, Shah was asked to run for the temporary government in the Discord election, but he had wanted to wait until the formal elections.
“It was a good call,” senior Shalina Ghimrey said. “If he had been the temporary prime minister and then got voted in again, it would have set a bad precedent.”
Shah joined the RSP several months ago after reaching an agreement with Laminchanne, stating that the former would be the party chairman and that Shah would be the parliamentary leader — a position that guarantees him to be the prime minister if the party wins the majority, as per the Nepali Constitution.
Despite his popular criticisms of classism and police brutality in his youth, Shah has faced opposition in the past for how he’s handled reconstruction projects in Kathmandu. Specifically, his enforcement of building codes had led to the uprooting of many small shops and some violence from his city’s police officers, according to The Kathmandu Post article.
Some believe he should have been more lenient, as these shop owners will need a source of income. Others believe that it was needed for the benefit of the city as a whole.
Senior Nirmala Baral thinks there were too many shops in Kathmandu and that it needed to be controlled.
“There was so much chaos with all these vendors everywhere. I think removing them was good for the development of the country. It needed to have been controlled long ago,” Baral said.
There have also been criticisms regarding his decorum. He has thrown harsh words at previous Nepali leadership in his songs, calling them “idiots” and “thieves.” Most recently, he labeled previous Prime Minister KP Oli as a “terrorist” and has said Oli contributed to the deaths during the crackdown on the Gen-Z protests in the fall.
Baral doesn’t think the label was unfounded. Many citizens blame Oli for how the situation has escalated and want him to be investigated accordingly.
“I don’t think he should censor himself just because he’s PM now. His unfiltered nature is why people trusted him so much,” Ghimirey said.
In a 2025 post that has since been deleted, Shah had cursed at the Nepali political parties, India, the U.S., and China, stating that all of them combined “can do nothing.” In regard to foreign relations, Shah’s push to lessen Nepal’s dependence on India has drawn criticism and unease from Indian audiences.
Despite these issues, Shah has remained largely popular with the Nepali youth with his progressive policies.
While controversial, his mission to clean up the streets of Kathmandu from urban clutter and garbage was successful with visible improvement. In education, he has pushed legislation to bring scholarships to 30,779 students in Kathmandu so they could further their education without financial burdens.
One of Shah’s biggest campaign promises was to amplify transparency to combat corruption. He delivered that promise by live-streaming executive meetings.
Once Shah is elected, Baral hopes that he can allocate funds to more job opportunities for tourism.
“Right now, most of the people try to get money from selling things on the streets. I feel like there can be better job opportunities for them in the tourism industry,” she said. “It would be good for the workers, the tourists, and the economy as a whole.”
According to RSP’s manifesto, it aims to create 1.2 million jobs and reduce the large-scale migration of Nepalis seeking employment abroad.
In other news, Rachana Khatiwada, the mother of one of the victims of the protest, is running for a seat in the proportional representation balloting. In the direct vote, 14 women were elected — 13 of whom belonged to the RSP.
This is an improvement from the last House of Representatives, where only nine women were elected. These numbers, however, fail to adhere to an article in the Nepali constitution, which states that 33.3% of the House should be represented by women.
Only time will tell if the Rastriya Swatantra Party will hold true to its promises or if it will fall back like the parties it had criticized.
