A Watershed Political Turnoil: The Gen Z Movement and State Fragility in Nepal

 

The political phenomenon commonly referred to as the "Gen Z movement" is a turning point in Nepal's recent political history. Within a period of merely 27 hours, the nation underwent unprecedented state fragility. The event was characterized by colossal human casualties, with more than seven dozen fatalities, and systematic attacks on key state infrastructures. Symbolically and functionally significant buildings—like Singha Durbar (the secretariat of the federal government), the building of the Federal Parliament, the Supreme Court, Shital Niwas (the Presidential palace), and numerous police stations, private residences, and business buildings—were attacked with arson. The violence resulted in the downfall of the government of the day, the dissolution of parliament, and a radical restructuring of the political order.

 

A significant aspect of the crisis was the immobilization of the state's coercive machinery. Law enforcement agencies were visibly ineffective, and the national army was substantially non-functional until the crisis had spiraled beyond management. The eventual dominance of the military into the political arena was symbolically signaled by the Chief of Army Staff speaking to the nation in front of a backdrop that had a portrait of King Prithvi Narayan Shah. The fact that subsequent negotiations with movement representatives were conducted at the military headquarters further underscored the institution's authoritative involvement in civilian political processes.

 

In the midst of this institutional vacuum, the then Prime Minister offered his resignation, which was formally accepted by the President under a disputed clause allowing him to stay on in a caretaker capacity. During this interregnum, the executive fell under the custody of the national army, highlighting the complete breakdown of traditional constitutional safeguards. Political violence swelled, including a physical assault on former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and his wife, Dr. Arju Rana Deuba. Live broadcast of these events contributed to a general climate of fear and political disorientation. In a further violation of constitutional convention, the ex-Chief Justice Sushila Karki was appointed Prime Minister and, in conjunction with the army, enforced a nationwide curfew.

 

The crisis excited intense regional interest, with the security forces of a neighboring country expressing a willingness to intervene at the formal request of the government. Internally, the army's conditional support to the civilian government—such as offering helicopter evacuation only after it was ensured that the Prime Minister would resign—demonstrated the role of the military as a political arbiter. Negotiations, conducted under heavy military surveillance at Shital Niwas, involved political party leaders virtually acting as delegates under the control of the army. Military leadership expressly threatened that withdrawal would be the consequence of a collapse of political consensus, graphically illustrating the conditional nature of state power.

 

Party leaders, imprisoned for ten days amid constitutional violations and dissolution of parliament, subsequently negotiated in characteristically anachronistic terms. For instance, policy documents presented to the Maoist party's central committee did not have any content reference to the Gen Z movement or to the new political reality. The meeting degenerated into classic intra-party factionalism between leaders Prachanda, Prakash, and Prabhakar, rather than a critical analysis of the structural break. The debate was characterized by rhetorical glorification and demonization, a profound departure from the party's professed ideals of dialectical debate.

 

This analytical failure reflects a broader political stagnation. Constitutionally, the last period was already marred by grave irregularities. The formation of the UML-Congress alliance government under Article 76(2) of the constitution was followed by failure to secure a vote of confidence. Rather than invoking Article 76(3) to swear in the leader of the largest party, a new government was sworn in under 76(2) through coercive means, including threats to the President and the judiciary. Judicial review was effectively staved off, as writ petitions were dismissed without process, and the Election Commission refused to accept intra-party expulsions. This political engineering, initially aimed at power consolidation for KP Sharma Oli, was also followed by a sharp geopolitical reorientation. Oli's alignment with U.S. strategic interests, as typified by his push for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) compact, was in congruence with his assertion of freedom from Indian influence, as exemplified by the re-fueling of boundary controversies regarding Kalapani and Lipulekh.

 

The Gen Z movement, however vocalized as a reaction against corruption and social media restrictions, happened in the context of this institutional logjam and geopolitical maneuvering. That it happened opens up the risk of instrumentalization by actors who want to generate political instability and project Nepal as a failed state. The silence of democracy's guardians—the absence of court challenges to the parliament's dissolution, the compromised judiciary, and a comatose civil society—only underlines the depth of the crisis.

 

Regionally, the Nepali developments appear in consonance with broader patterns of transnational political realignment apparent in South Asia, replicating experiments in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That suggests that the crisis is not merely a domestic problem but is an aspect of a broader assault on democratic norms, part of a global pattern of populist destabilization and institutional erosion. It is in this somber context that the inability of Nepal's political parties, and the Maoists most of all, to update their analytical paradigms from decades-old intra-party rivalries highlights a fundamental disconnect between the magnitude of external structural change and the stagnation of domestic political discourse. This intellectual and political complacency renders the polity extremely susceptible to internal collapse as well as external manipulation.