Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). That was quick. Just one day after the resignation of Nepalese Prime Minister Oli on September 9, a certain Balendra Shah was presented as the only potential successor. Surprisingly, he has very good relations with the US ambassador in Kathmandu.
Balendra Shah, 34, who became known throughout Nepal as a successful rapper under his stage name Balen when he was a teenager, won the mayoral election in Kathmandu in 2022 as a political outsider. Ironically, he is an active supporter of the “Generation Z” movement, whose activists have set fire to entire ministries in Kathmandu in recent days in protest against the government. No wonder that for the Generation Z movement and for the powers that want to exploit the protests of urban, Western-oriented youth for their own ends, there is only one candidate for the office of prime minister, namely Balen.
Hope for change or a political mirage?
Balendra Shah’s name has been the center of attention since the Generation Z-led protests. Triggered by a controversial ban on 26 social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and X, the extremely violent protests in Nepal followed a familiar pattern of so-called “color revolutions”: They developed into a broader movement against alleged government corruption—a proven tactical move to achieve a wider impact and mobilize even larger crowds.
The violence and arson have so far resulted in at least 19 deaths and over 300 injuries. The resignation of Prime Minister Oli on September 9, coupled with the resignation of his interior minister, Ramesh Lekhak, who took responsibility for banning social media, has created a political leadership vacuum in Nepal that can easily be exploited by determined and unscrupulous “revolutionaries” in combination with assistance from external actors.
Current social media campaigns targeting Generation Z feature advertisements such as “Balen For PM (Prime Minister),” which describe the rapper as a leader who “works solely for the good of the country without any personal interests” and praise him as a “symbol of change” .
However, Balen’s path to the office of prime minister is far from certain. Nepal’s political system stipulates that the prime minister is appointed by the president, usually from the leadership of the majority party or a coalition in parliament or, in the absence of a clear majority, from someone who can win the support of parliament. As an independent mayor with no party affiliation, however, Balen lacks the traditional political machinery to navigate the complex parliamentary dynamics.
Balen’s support base, although strong among young people, is untested at the national level , and his confrontational style has angered powerful established forces, including Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (UML). At the same time, Balen does not want to join any of the existing parties and repeatedly and vehemently invokes his independence and rejection of political parties.
On the other hand, Balen’s status as an outsider and his image as an anti-corruption politician could make him a powerful symbol of change. Nepal’s history of political instability—marked by the fall of the Rana regime, the abolition of the monarchy, and Maoist uprisings—has fueled distrust of traditional parties among parts of the population. Balen’s election victory as mayor in 2022, in which he defeated established candidates from the Nepali Congress and CPN (UML) parties, demonstrated his ability to break the status quo. Nevertheless, his lack of national government experience and the absence of a formal candidacy dampen expectations.
The interests of key external actors
India
At this point, it is worth asking: Who benefits from the current chaos in the country and from Balen as prime minister? Certainly not India, because in addition to his pro-Western orientation, Balen does not hold back with his criticism of India. Worse still, he supports nationalist “Greater Nepal” claims at the expense of Indian territory. In 2023, he placed a map of “Greater Nepal” in his office, which caused outrage in India because it clearly showed Balen’s territorial claims on Indian territory, including parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
While Balen is presented in Western, especially US, media as a liberal free spirit, the rapper and current mayor of Kathmandu has also banned the screening of Indian films in cinemas in the country’s capital, citing cultural and political concerns. It goes without saying that such actions have further strained relations with India. Such actions do not exactly underscore his ability as future prime minister to maintain Nepal’s delicate geopolitical balance.
China
Until the recent unrest, Nepal had good and increasingly close relations with China. This is likely to be a thorn in Washington’s side. Nepal is also a dialogue partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and Prime Minister Oli recently attended the 2025 SCO summit in Tianjin. China is also Nepal’s largest source of foreign direct investment.
Nepal joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative back in 2017. Key projects include the Pokhara and Gautam Buddha international airports, which were built with Chinese financing, and the Kathmandu-Lhasa cross-border railway, which is part of the Trans-Himalayan Multi-Dimensional Connectivity Network that will connect Nepal directly to the Chinese railway system. China is investing heavily in hydropower (crucial for Nepal’s energy needs) and telecommunications, with Chinese companies such as Huawei expanding 5G networks.
Against this backdrop, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that, given Nepal’s buffer position between China and India, neither country has any interest in chaos and destabilization in Kathmandu. Rather, maintaining the status quo in Nepal is likely to be of great interest to all regional actors, with the emphasis on “regional actors”!
USA
The non-regional actor, the US, on the other hand, has a long history of sowing chaos across entire regions of the world with so-called “color revolutions.” Nepal’s strategic location makes it a potential pressure point in the rivalry between the US and China. A pro-Western or less China-friendly government could limit the expansion of the BRI and slow down Nepal’s ambitions in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). In addition, the US has funded programs in Nepal (e.g., USAID, a $500 million grant from the Millennium Challenge Corporation) to counter Chinese influence. Hundreds of Western NGOs are also active in the country.
In the past, USAID has been responsible for organizing and financing color revolutions and other types of US regime change operations in foreign countries, either directly or indirectly through NGOs. Now, however, interested parties argue that President Trump has shut down USAID. Formally, this is true, but it is also true that some of USAID’s activities have been “rescued” and transferred to the US State Department with the explanation that this will allow the remaining USAID functions now anchored in the State Department to be better, i.e., more directly, linked to US foreign policy.
From rapper to mayor of Kathmandu and now to prime minister?
This raises the question of whether Balen has what it takes, at least organizationally, to lead his country. A look at his successes and failures as mayor of the state capital can give us an impression.
Balen was born on April 27, 1990, in Kathmandu into a Buddhist family, the son of an Ayurvedic practitioner, and grew up amid the cultural and social upheavals of the city. He attended secondary school and earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering. At a young age, he became a successful rapper, a US underground music genre that, among other things, glorified gangsterism (gangster rap).
In 2022, Balen ran as an independent candidate for mayor of Kathmandu and prevailed over the two parties that dominated the city (Nepali Congress and CPN (UML)). His campaign focused on urban development, anti-corruption, waste management, traffic control, and cultural preservation.
Since taking office, Balen has governed with a direct, confrontational style, for example, by demolishing the poor houses and huts that had been illegally built in the city, leaving thousands of families homeless and usually moving back to relatives in the villages. This “cleansing” of the city earned Balen admiration from parts of the upper class and sharp criticism from the lower class.
Balen also received a lot of criticism from organizations such as Human Rights Watch for his disproportionate use of force against street vendors, whom he wanted to drive out of the city. Videos showed city police chasing, beating, and confiscating the vendors’ property. There is no question that such measures had a negative impact on the standard of living of the urban poor. After all, almost half of the country’s national economy depends on informal businesses.
Balen wanted to ban an economic sector that is vital for the survival of many poor people without offering any viable alternative solutions. Overcoming mass poverty among the population seems to be at the bottom of Balen’s list of priorities anyway, given his neoliberal approach. But what about his organizational skills?
Even the priorities he proclaimed during his election campaign could not be implemented by the chaotic Balen. His waste management initiatives, a key election promise, stalled right at the beginning of his term in office. Garbage collectors were not paid and stopped working, and Kathmandu appears to be continuing to suffocate in garbage.
Balen’s efforts to clean up the aftermath of the recent floods in Kathmandu have also been criticized as totally disorganized. Balen was apparently even unable to implement his favorite project, namely his ambitious plans to internationalize festivals and transform Kathmandu into a “24-hour city.”
These shortcomings cast doubt on Balen’s competence to meet the much more complex challenges of being Prime Minister of Nepal. But that doesn’t seem to interest the urban TikTok youth. Nor does it seem to occur to them that their protests are being exploited by external actors for goals that are not in the interests of Nepal and its people.
Note:
See the article
- Is the US behind the unrest in Nepal? von Rainer Rupp
in WELTEXPRESS.
