Source: Direct News
Following mass demonstrations, riots and fires, former Nepalese Prime Minister Orly announced his resignation in the Himalayas, welcoming a 73-year-old female interim Prime Minister, Sushi Karki, a former chief judge of the Supreme Court of Nepal.
According to Xinhua News Agency on September 13, Karki was sworn in at the presidential palace in Nepal on the evening of the 12th. According to the nomination letter, she will be fully responsible for all government departments, and the former House of Representatives of the Federal Parliament dissolved at 11 p.m. that night. Karki is expected to form a cabinet within a few days, with the central task of the interim government headed by her being to organize a general election within six months, the current general election is scheduled for March 5, 2026.
On the evening of September 12, in the presidential palace in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, Nepali President Baldur (right) presided over the ceremony, and former chief judge of the Supreme Court of Nepal Sushira Karki (right) sworn in as Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Nepal.
China and India reacted to Karki's inauguration.Indian Prime Minister Modi congratulated on social media on 13th, China's Foreign Ministry on 14th, and stressed the willingness to promote the continued development of China-Nice relations.
Karki’s Political Career: A Path to Combat Corruption
Karki was the first and only female chief judge of the Supreme Court in Nepal. On June 7, 1952, Karki was born in a peasant family in eastern Nepal and was the eldest of seven children. In 1972, she graduated from the University of Tribunale in Nepal and received a bachelor’s degree in literature. Then she went to India to study political science, and in 1975 obtained a master’s degree in political science from the University of Benares, India, and in 1978 returned to Tribunale to study law and graduate. Over seven years, Karki’s studies reached the three main fields of literature, political science and law.
In 1990, 38-year-old Kargene was arrested and imprisoned for participating in the people's movement to overthrow the then regime. This experience deeply influenced her, and later became the source of her novel Shackles published in 2019. After retiring in 2018, she published her autobiography, Justice, to review her life course.
In 2008, she became a senior lawyer at the Nepali Bar Association, and in January 2009 she was appointed a Supreme Court agent judge, and in the following year she became an official judge. In the judicial system, she was known for her “zero tolerance to corruption” hardness and advocacy independence, with the most influential case being the 2012 corruption conviction of Nepali’s then Minister of Information and Communications, Jayaprakash Prasad Gupta. This was the first minister in the country to be convicted and imprisoned for corruption in history, and was rated by the media as “breaking the myth of the political elite’s immunity.”
In July 2016, she was officially appointed Chief Justice of Nepal. From prisoner to chief judge, Karki’s life was a history of encouragement and sympathy for ordinary people. As a former chief judge, she symbolized legal authority and procedural fairness, becoming the only “judge” that could accept and handle the current turmoil. Her appointment responded to the core demands of the day-long riots: against corruption and against “Father II” politics.
Nepal’s “Generation Z”
Since September 8, mass protests led by young people have erupted across Nepal, protesting the government’s blockade of social media platforms and accusations of government corruption. Thousands of demonstrators have walked out on the streets, many of whom have signs and banners with the words “Generation Z,” the word that has spread through the whole protests of Generation Z, a group of people born between 1997 and 2012 and also “indigenous people” who use social media.
The spark of their protests stems from the Nepalese government’s earlier blocking of 26 social media platforms, which the government said were aimed at fighting fake news and cyber fraud, but “Generation Z” interpreted it as “corrupt groups trying to cover our eyes.”
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that Nepal is one of the countries with the highest per capita social media usage rate in South Asia. About 17 million people use social media platforms, accounting for 48.5% of the total population. For Nepal's "Generation Z", these platforms are not only social tools, but also infrastructure to sustain livelihoods. Nepal's per capita disposable income is about 500 to 1,000 yuan, and its economic level is extremely low. But thanks to the development of social media, educated young people began to carry out e-commerce activities through social media, and the ban cut off their source of income to some extent. "My purchasing business went to zero overnight, which is worse than losing a job," a college student in Kathmandu said in an interview. This is one of the reasons for the "Gen Z" protest.
After six months of interim rule, how will she cope with the major challenges?
In fact, Kalki's appointment itself was the result of multi-party play. In order to reach consensus, the parties held three consecutive days of consultations, and even some youth groups voted for the prime minister candidate by initiating multiple rounds.
As the interim prime minister, Karki's power is limited, but the task is extremely arduous: organizing a general election within six months, repairing destroyed government buildings, investigating the perpetrators of wanton shooting in riots, and responding to the anti-corruption demands of youth... each of them is extremely difficult. Can she navigate the intertwined bureaucracy? How much can her "moral authority" play in the brutal political game? All this is still unknown.
Author Wang Sihua