Nepal: President has a message for Gen Z over picking interim leader

“I am deliberating and making every effort to find a way out of the current difficult situation in the country within the constitutional framework and to protect democracy,” President Ram Chandra Paudel's letter dated September 11, seen by Indian newspaper Hindustan Times, said in Nepali.

The letter has been written at a time when the President and the army are learnt to have told the Gen-Z leaders that they must finalise a name.

“The onus is on them (Gen-Z reps), so they can't blame the President and army later," a person familiar with the matter told HT.

Meanwhile, negotiations are likely to take place between the Nepali Army, President Ram Chandra Paudel, and Gen Z youth representatives to decide the leadership of an interim government amid ongoing political turmoil.Sources told The Himalayan Times that Gen Z protest leaders have finalised former Chief Justice Sushila Karki as their sole nominee for the post of interim Prime Minister.

Nepal unrest

The violence in Nepal’s Kathmandu continued on Wednesday as angry Gen Z continued to protest against unemployment, brain drain, and poor governance, with dramatic visuals emerging of ministers and their families clinging to army helicopter rescue slings as mobs torched buildings and attacked politicians’ residences across Kathmandu.

The unrest has already forced Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to resign and flee the country, leaving the army in charge of restoring order.

Tens of thousands of mostly Gen Z protesters vandalised the homes of senior government officials on Tuesday, before setting fire to the Parliament building itself.

The residence of Communications Minister Prithvi Subba Gurung was burned down, while mobs hurled stones at the homes of Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Bishnu Paudel, Nepal Rastra Bank Governor Biswo Paudel, and former Home Minister Ramesh Lekhak.

One widely shared video showed the Finance Minister being chased, beaten, and kicked on the streets, while another depicted Foreign Affairs Minister Arzu Rana Deuba and her husband, former Prime Minister and Nepali Congress chief Sher Bahadur Deuba, under violent attack at their Kathmandu home.

Deuba, bleeding from the face, was later filmed sitting helplessly in a field before being rescued by authorities.