Balendra Shah’s get together represents a reformist wave reshaping Himalayan nation’s politics.
Printed On 8 Mar 2026
Preliminary and partial outcomes launched present a brand new political get together led by an ex-rapper is in entrance in Nepal’s parliamentary election, the nation’s first since final yr’s youth-led revolt.
The Rastriya Swatantra (RSP) already received 60 of 165 straight elected seats and is main in 61 different constituencies within the outcomes revealed by Nepal’s Election Fee on Saturday.
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Its prime ministerial candidate is rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, 35, who received the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race and emerged as a number one determine within the 2025 rebellion that ousted former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli.
He highlighted well being and schooling for poor Nepalis as a key focus of his marketing campaign, which rode a wave of public anger in direction of conventional political events.
Shah, working straight in opposition to Oli in a southeastern district, received the seat with a large margin, securing virtually 4 occasions as many votes as the previous prime minister.
He stated the vote mirrored his refusal to take “the straightforward method out” and signalled a reckoning with the “issues and betrayals which have affected the nation”.
Oil congratulated Shah in a submit on X, wishing him a “clean and profitable” time period.
[Translation: Balenu Babu, Congratulations to you for the victory! May your five-year tenure be smooth and successful—heartfelt best wishes!]
Shah, broadly recognized merely as “Balen”, educated as a civil engineer earlier than breaking by means of as one in every of Nepal’s most outstanding rappers, releasing acutely aware music focusing on corruption and inequality that later turned anthems of the September protests.
His 2022 election as Kathmandu’s first impartial mayor was additionally a significant upset for the political institution on the time. The RSP, his get together, based the identical yr, was constructed on an analogous anti-establishment platform.
Its marketing campaign earlier than Thursday’s vote was extremely organised, with a more-than-660-person social media operation and vital funding from the Nepali diaspora, notably in america.
“The nation was fed up with the outdated corrupt leaders,” stated Birendra Kumar Mehta, a member of RSP’s central committee.
The September protests, initially triggered by a authorities ban on social media platforms, quickly escalated right into a mass motion in opposition to corruption and financial stagnation. Not less than 77 individuals had been killed.
Shah emerged as a figurehead of the protests, and his track Nepal Haseko, Nepal Smiling, amassed greater than 10 million YouTube views in the course of the unrest. His victory displays a rising generational divide within the nation.
Greater than 40 p.c of Nepal’s almost 30 million individuals are beneath 35, but the management of its established events has remained in its 70s.
Nepalese journalist Pranaya Rana described Shah to Al Jazeera as embodying “the outsider spirit that many younger Nepalis are searching for to shake up the established order”.
