The first surprise was the turnout. About 65 percent of Nepal's 13.5 million voters cast ballots in the country's general elections held this May. Conventional wisdom was that since Nepalis were fed up with non-performance and corruption, incited by a Maoist boycott and threats of violence, and uninspired by an issue-less campaign, they would stay away from the booths in large numbers.
Instead, the turnout was as high as in the last elections five years ago. Not only that, Nepali voters surprised everyone by showing more maturity in their collective judgement than the politicians they had elected. They decided that the Nepali Congress will form a majority government, and the Communist Party of Nepal United Marxist-Leninist (CPN-UML) will provide the main opposition.
Another surprise was the rejection of many of the old faces in all parties who had been associated with horse-trading and various other scandals. Voters also rejected linguoor ethno-opportunist politicians bent on promoting their own brand of narrow communalism, such as 'independent' communist Padma Ratna Tuladhar and Hindi protagonist Gajendra Narayan Singh, who has been minister in every horse-traded coalition cabinet of the second parliament. Singh's defeat (along with Bam Dev Gautam's, of whom more below) was a sign that Nepali voters do not buy pro -or anti-Indian arguments. They have their own national worries aplenty.
The biggest surprise of all, however, was the complete decimation of the Communist Party of Nepal Marxist-Leninist (CPN-ML). A similar fate met the Lokendra Bahadur Chand faction of the rightist Rashtriya Prajatantra Party (RPP), known as a party of "all chiefs and no Indians". The CPN-ML separated from the parent CPN-UML in 1998, while the RPP (Chand) broke away from the Surya Bahadur Thapa faction of the party of the same name. Neither won a single seat in the 205-member House of Representatives.