Girija Prasad Koirala is back in the saddle at Singha Darbar. This is his fourth stint in the hot seat that have seen ten turns and six occupants since democracy was restored a decade ago. But it had better not be business as usual this time around, since Koirala has taken charge after ousting the person he himself had installed about a year ago.
Back then, it was hailed as a master stroke. Koirala's Nepali Congress was heading a coalition with the Nepal Communist Party (UML) when he called for mid-term elections "to rid the country of political instability". The Nepali Congress, while a divided house, was still in one piece even as its main rivals—both the NCP (UML) as well as the conservative Rastriya Prajatantra Party—had split formally. To check dissent and control rebel candidates within his party, Koirala announced that if his party gained an absolute majority, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai would be the next prime minister.
It is unclear whether it was the ceaseless campaigning and direct leadership of Koirala that worked, or the magic of Bhattarai´s name, but the Congress managed a comfortable majority. Koirala, as head of the victorious party, kept to his pre-election promise and had Bhattarai installed as the prime minister. It was a decision that he was to regret from day one, as Bhattarai went on to form a cabinet that was a queer mix of his old cronies and suspected wheeler-dealers.
The Bhattarai government was guided by the principle that those who do nothing can do no wrong. It would have worked, if it were not for some feats of his faithfuls. Yog Prasad Upadhyay, the prime minister's Man Friday, stirred a hornet´s nest as education minister by his whimsical decision to grant tenure to thousands of temporary school teachers even as the result of a competitive examination for those very posts was pending. Bal Bahadur KC, another Bhattarai favourite, gained notoriety when a local daily had him scaling a compound wall in the capital.