He switched allies this month, saying he was not given free rein to act (File)
Kathmandu, Nepal:
Nepal Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal won a vote of confidence in parliament on Wednesday, a week after he formed his third coalition in more than a year to lead a government dominated by liberal communists.
Dahal, a former Maoist guerrilla leader in the Himalayan country sandwiched between China and India, formed a coalition cabinet last year that included the Nepali Congress and other smaller groups.
He switched allies this month, saying he had not been given the opportunity to act freely.
The new cabinet is dominated by the liberal Communist Party of Nepal (UML) and includes several other smaller groups. He also briefly led the United Marxist-Leninist Alliance after the 2022 elections.
Parliament Speaker Dev Raj Ghimire said Dahal won 157 votes against the 138 needed in the 275-member Parliament, while 110 MPs voted against him.
“I have been disappointed many times… and forced to form a new coalition cabinet, which is just a regular political process,” Dahal said in parliament on Wednesday, referring to the Nepali Congress, the current main opposition party. .
Nepal’s Congress, after its disintegration last week, said the prime minister had deceived Congress by removing him from the cabinet without any notice.
Dahal led a decade-long insurgency from 1996 that left 17,000 people dead before joining mainstream politics under a 2006 peace deal overseen by the United Nations.
He is serving as prime minister for a third time but did not complete the full five-year term in his previous term.
Nepal has gone through 13 governments since it abolished its 239-year-old monarchy and became a republic in 2008.
With instability hampering economic growth worth $40 billion, tens of thousands of young Nepalis are seeking work abroad, mainly in the Middle East, South Korea and Malaysia.
Nepal has extensive social and economic ties with major donor India. China has also flooded the country with aid and infrastructure investment to lure Kathmandu as an ally.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
