Democracy in its fundamental nature has the feature of people agreeing to select a person for the representation of their voice, perspective, and desires on a political level. Special structures of democracy also allow a person to try to become a representative irrespective of people’s choice or involvement in a political party’s hierarchy. This is called an independent candidacy. To step up as a leading candidate on your own without people’s choice or a political party sounds counterintuitive but that is what democracy is, to provide a platform and an equal degree of freedom for expression.

Nepal’s democracy is sadly hijacked. With corrupt hierarchies and syndicates, the system is hollow from the inside and looks disgusting from the outside as well. In the case of our democracy, I am not a cynic but a sceptic. People who have hardship managing two meals a day have always been used as vote banks. These people do not care who gets to the top, or who rules them and rightly so.

Also, we Nepalese are innately programmed to deduce everything happening to and around us to fate. Our polity has no strategy because anything that happens to an individual, a family, or a society, is credited to fate. The burden of responsibility is rarely shared by the system, that is the government. We readily accept it. The paternal dependency, the inner faith that one day someone will arrive and make everything right, and to put things in order right now is not in our hands our responsibility, is ingrained within our consciousness which is fundamentally troublesome.

“ This paternal dependency could readily lead to the development of a polity which is essentially antagonistic to the genuine interests of the people because it is supportive of various forms of authoritarianism and of the cumbersome form of government by a bureaucracy that has currently evolved.”  (DB. Bista, Fatalism and Development)

The betrayal that has been piling up elections after elections, leaders after leaders, from the same old faces to the same old promises, the same pre-election flattery to the same post-election robbery has exhausted all of us of our energy to practice our democratic rights. Honestly, at this moment in time, we just want some novelty because we have no other way out.

We have seen the recent rise of new non-veteran faces in the circle of politics. We saw in the last local elections, how Ranju Darshana got an unexpected yet substantial number of votes. This time it’s Balen. Ranju however, had a party behind her, is a strong activist, and is politically more mature than Balen.The experts in the Democratic system of governance have always called out the selection of a popular, non-political face as a leader. Bringing in a non-experienced person from the outside is a sure shot recipe for failure or misuse. It is both the case for being a failure to run a government or being misused by others to become a tyrant puppet.

“If a charismatic outsider emerges on the scene, gaining popularity as he challenges the old order, it is tempting for establishment politicians who feel their control is unravelling to try to co-opt him”. ( Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky,  How Democracies Die).

Despite all this, the scenes unravelling here are quite interesting. We can see quite a bit of the Pro-Balen movement on social media right now. The younger generation, maybe because of the influence of his music/rap background, has welcomed him with his decision to fight for the Mayor’s position in Kathmandu Metropolitan. The former generation’s failure to produce a true leader or leadership has caused the younger generation to be convinced of any new face. I think there is a substantial number of young voters who will vote for any new candidate other than the same old corrupted faces.

To dismiss or ignore this surge to vote for Balen by labelling it as ‘ignorant kids’ or ‘it is just a populist stunt’ would be an underestimate. The underlying engine that has given the power to this kind of trend should be studied very carefully. In my opinion, like I already mentioned, it is the exhaustion, our democratic history, and the betrayals: an ugly cocktail, that fuels movements like this.

Our ‘chiya guff’ has always been centered around the empowerment of youth, the involvement of young energy, and the replacement of inefficient corrupt systems and their members. But in reality, when someone tries to change it by asking permission to get inside the system, we collectively dismiss the attempt and then complain again. Are we really scared to allow a new face to take charge, be it Ranju, Balen, Sunita Dangol or Prajwal Sharma? It is clear that the present political scenario of new faces is the result of the failures of previous generations. I too believe that people with no prior experience in politics cannot take charge of such immense positions but maybe I am wrong. Maybe, it finally deserves a shot. And if it fails, it fails. It’s been failing forever anyways.

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