Kathmandu, September 11
Pressure is mounting on CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli to step aside and make way for a new generation of leaders, with party cadres and organisational units across the country calling for leadership change as part of the party’s post-election review.
Recommendations collected by a UML task force show that most of the party’s provincial committees and affiliated bodies believe the party cannot continue in its current form and that its top leadership must take responsibility for the party’s electoral defeat.
The recommendations have been compiled in an annex to a report prepared by UML General Secretary Shankar Pokharel, who is the member-secretary of the task force reviewing the party’s performance and proposing its reorganisation.
Of the 13 bodies that submitted recommendations, only Madhesh Province, the Contact Coordination Committee and the party’s sister organisations stopped short of calling for a change in the leadership.
Most of the remaining bodies have either explicitly called on Oli to leave the chair or urged the existing leadership to make way for a generational transition.
The calls are particularly significant because they extend beyond Oli’s political opponents within the party. Even Koshi Province, his home province, has recommended that the leadership accept moral responsibility for the election defeat and be prepared to step aside.
“Leaders who have lost public support and failed should not run the party,” the Karnali Province committee said, urging leaders at all levels to be prepared to make sacrifices.
Calls for an orderly exit
Lumbini Province was more explicit, urging Oli to relinquish the party leadership and assume a guardian or patron role.
“Chairman KP Sharma Oli should put the party’s long-term future ahead of his personal position, pave the way for the new generation and remain in a guardian or patron role,” its recommendation said.
Lumbini has also proposed dissolving party committees from the centre down to the local level and forming convention organising committees, with new leadership to be elected within six months.
Gandaki Province called for a special general convention to facilitate a dignified leadership transition.
“Established party leaders or the chair should resign on moral grounds or pave the way through generational transfer,” the province said.
Karnali called on Oli to choose a “respectable exit”, arguing that the principal leadership should bear responsibility for what it described as an unexpected electoral defeat.
Sudurpaschim Province similarly said the party’s principal leadership should take responsibility and create an environment for a smooth transfer of power.
The call for change has also come from the UML’s central advisory bodies, commissions, departments and overseas organisations. The advisers have urged the party’s principal leadership to leave office with dignity in the interest of the party’s future.
Overseas chapters and commissions have called for capable and clean-image leaders from the second, third and fourth generations, including young leaders and women, to be brought to the forefront.
Bagmati offers only significant defence of Oli
Bagmati Province stands out as the only provincial committee to have submitted a mixed position on Oli.
Its recommendations include both calls for Oli to leave immediately and arguments against removing him.
The province argued that responsibility for the election defeat should not be placed solely on the party chair.
“Responsibility for the defeat should be taken collectively by the Secretariat, central leadership, provinces, districts, elected representatives and all levels of the party,” the recommendation said.
It also argued that a leadership elected by more than two-thirds of the party’s general convention should not be removed in violation of the party’s statute.
However, the same set of recommendations also states that Oli should be removed through due process if he does not voluntarily announce his departure.
The mixed position comes from Bagmati, where UML leader Mahesh Basnet, considered close to Oli, is the party’s in-charge.
Leadership model under scrutiny
The debate over Oli’s future is closely linked to wider criticism of the UML’s increasingly centralised decision-making structure.
The Kathmandu Valley committee argued that excessive concentration of power around the party chair had weakened collective decision-making within the UML.
It criticised changes made at the party’s second statute convention, saying they had created a structure in which lower levels were unable to act without the chair’s consultation or direction.
The recommendation went as far as comparing the organisational model to a “traditional Soviet-style” system and warned that excessive concentration of power could create risks of organisational fragmentation.
Another issue raised by several party units is the removal of the 70-year age limit and two-term limit for party positions.
The Kathmandu committee recommended restoring both provisions and enforcing them at every level.
The recommendations also criticised what Lumbini described as an “army-style” mode of party operation, in which collective leadership had been weakened and decisions were increasingly imposed from the top.
The task force is now set to deliberate on the recommendations as the UML weighs both the reasons behind its electoral defeat and a broader restructuring of the party—putting Oli’s leadership at the centre of an increasingly consequential internal debate.
