Nine left parties in Nepal decided to merge to form a new Nepali Communist Party (NCP) in Kathmandu on Tuesday, November 4. The new party revives hope in the left’s electoral presence in the upcoming national elections in March.

The parties who formally announced their merger are the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center), led by former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal “Prachanda”, Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist) led by Madhav Kumar Nepal, CPN, Nepal Socialist Party, Janata Samajbadi Party Nepal, CPN (Maoist Socialist), CPN (Samyabadi), CPN (Communist) and CPN (Revolutionary Maoist).

The parties signed an 18-point agreement on Tuesday to form the NCP. The new party held its first national convention on Wednesday in which a new central committee was formed, a formal declaration was made and its principles were announced.

According to news reports, the party will follow Marxist-Leninist principles with a political program focusing on scientific socialism with “Nepali characteristics”. It will have a five-pointed star as its new election symbol.

Claiming that NCP’s objectives would be to achieve economic prosperity, good governance, and controlling corruption, CPN (Maoist Center) leader and former home and foreign minister of the country Narayan Kaji Shrestha said on Tuesday that it will attempt to anticipate and address the concerns of Gen Z.

The so-called Gen Z protests took place in September. In these protests, scores of people were killed and several national institutions (such as the parliament building) were torched. This forced the resignation of then prime minister K P Sharma Oli who was heading a coalition government made up of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and the Nepali Congress.

Analysts argued that the angry and violent protests by the country’s youth was a reflection of systemic failures of the successive governments, mostly led by the left since the downfall of the monarchy in 2000s, to address the issues of employment and corruption.

March elections

Nepal is currently ruled by a caretaker government under the leadership of former chief justice Sushila Karki. This caretaker government dissolved the parliament and decided to hold national elections on March 5 next year.

Maoist leader Narayan Kaji Shrestha, though, denied that the formation of a unified communist party was focused on March elections and claimed that it was a result of long drawn efforts which began before the protests in September which helped in expediting the process.

“While we were working to bring the changes in the nation, at the right time, this new political scenario developed, and now we are at a new juncture in time, making another historic move,” Shrestha was quoted saying by the media.

The NCP “will focus on protecting the gains of the people’s democratic revolution and laying the groundwork for socialism,” claimed the statement issued by it on Tuesday.

One of the biggest communist formations in the country, the CPN (UML) did not join the new formation on Tuesday.

CPN (UML) was part of an earlier attempt to create a united communist formation in the country. In 2018, it merged with CPN (Maoist Center) to form the Nepal Communist Party (NCP). The party did not last long and in 2021, while in government, a split happened and post split, both the CPN (Maoist Centre) and CPN (UML) resumed their pre-merger forms.

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