KP Sharma Oli appointed Nepal’s new prime minister

Nepal’s president appointed Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli as prime minister for a fourth time on Sunday, after his communist party forged a coalition government with the centre-left Nepali Congress.

First elected as prime minister in 2015, he was re-elected in 2018 and then reappointed briefly in 2021 in Nepal’s often turbulent parliament, reports AFP.

In the Himalayan republic of about 30 million people, overshadowed by giant neighbours India and China, Oli previously trod a fine balance between the rivals, cordial to both but reaching out to Beijing to decrease Nepal’s dependency on New Delhi.

“President Poudel has appointed KP Sharma Oli as the new prime minister of Nepal,” Kiran Pokharel, press adviser to President Ram Chandra Poudel, told AFP.

Oli, 72, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal- Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), will be sworn into office on Monday, Pokharel added.

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.

Nepal’s next general elections are due in 2027.

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.