KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 7
The latest confrontation inside the Nepali Congress may be dressed up as a dispute over the timing of its National Convention. It is, however, about something considerably larger: whether the party is prepared to accept that its political generation has changed.
Sher Bahadur Deuba’s faction wants to hold a separate National Convention in December. The Gagan Kumar Thapa-led Congress has announced its convention for October. Behind this procedural battle lies a contest between two very different visions of what the party should look like in the years ahead.
The outcome will matter not merely to the Nepali Congress but to the future of Nepal’s democratic politics.
The party has already received a warning that cannot be wished away. The Gen Z movement was, at its core, an expression of impatience with an old political order-its leaders, its habits, its privileges and its refusal to make room for a new generation. It was not simply a revolt against one government or one political party. It was a challenge to a political culture that has allowed the same individuals to dominate public life for decades. The Congress cannot claim that it did not see this coming.
Its younger leaders had been saying for years that the party was losing touch with the electorate, particularly with younger Nepalis. They questioned the concentration of power in a handful of leaders, the factionalism and patronage that determined political advancement, and the reluctance of senior leaders to make way for those who came after them.
Their warnings were largely treated as internal party politics. Then Gen Z took the argument outside the party. That should force the Congress to reconsider what it means by generational change.
This is not simply about replacing ageing leaders with a younger faces. Nor is it about creating a few positions for younger politicians while the old system of decision-making remains intact.
A generational transition that preserves the old political culture is not a transition at all. The real test for the Congress is whether it can change the way it exercises power.
Congress General Secretary Guru Raj Ghimire has argued that the previous generation of party leaders had been repeatedly warned about public dissatisfaction but chose to remain in power. “When a leader fails to live up to people’s expectation, he or she should hand over the party leadership to the new generation”, he said.
The party General Secretary Pradip Paudel has similarly argued that the party’s old syndicalist practices are being dismantled under the new leadership. “We want the next National Convention and event of unity which can bind together all-party leaders and together,” he said adding that it was because the current leadership’s sincere hope for unity, that they had postponed ward conventions but the rival faction was trying to mar the atmosphere.
Those arguments deserve to be taken seriously, irrespective of one’s factional preference.
For decades, Nepali politics has operated on the assumption that political experience necessarily confers an indefinite claim to leadership. Leaders who have served one or two terms have routinely sought another. Former prime ministers have continued to determine the direction of parties long after their governments have disappeared from public memory. Party structures have often been built around individuals rather than institutions.
The younger electorate is increasingly unwilling to accept this arrangement. It is also less impressed by political longevity. A long political résumé is not, by itself, a qualification for continued power. Young Nepalis are asking more basic questions: What has changed? Who is accountable? Why are the same people still making the decisions? Why should leadership be a lifetime occupation?
These are questions the Congress cannot answer by organising another factional convention.
The Deuba faction may have legitimate procedural arguments. It may question the circumstances in which the Thapa-led Central Working Committee emerged and challenge the legitimacy of decisions taken by the new leadership. Such disputes should be settled through the party’s constitution and democratic institutions.
But there is a larger political reality that no procedural argument can erase. The old generation cannot indefinitely negotiate its way around the arrival of the new one.
Deuba and his generation have played an important role in the history of Nepal’s democratic movement. That history deserves recognition. But political history cannot become a permanent licence to occupy the future.
Indeed, the greatest service an older generation can perform for a political party is to know when to pass the baton.
This is particularly important for the Nepali Congress because its strength has historically rested on its ability to present itself as a vehicle for democratic change. If the party becomes identified with resistance to change within its own ranks, it risks an extraordinary contradiction: a party that helped bring democratic transformation to the country becoming incapable of transforming itself.
The Gen Z movement has changed the political environment in which every established party must now operate. Young voters are more connected, more politically aware and less willing to accept hierarchy for hierarchy’s sake. They are demanding transparency, competence and accountability. They are also much less attached to political brands simply because those brands have existed for generations.
The Congress therefore faces a choice more consequential than the date of its National Convention.
It can fight to preserve an internal balance of power that belongs to the past. Or it can recognise that the country outside its headquarters has already moved ahead.
If the party chooses the second path, generational change must mean more than electing younger office-bearers. It must mean opening decision-making to a new generation, ending the culture of permanent factional bosses, strengthening internal democracy, enforcing leadership rotation and allowing competence-not proximity to a powerful leader-to determine political advancement.
Most importantly, the new leadership must prove that it understands the anger that fuelled Gen Z.
There is little value in replacing one generation of politicians with another if the new generation reproduces the same patronage networks, the same entitlement and the same distance from ordinary citizens.
The Nepali Congress has survived because it has repeatedly adapted to changing political realities. It now faces perhaps its most important adaptation in a generation.
The question is not whether Sher Bahadur Deuba should have another role, or whether Gagan Thapa deserves one. The question is whether any political party can remain relevant when its leadership refuses to recognise that the electorate has changed.