Capping days of speculation, the Nepal president’s office has announced that former chief justice Sushila Karki will be the interim prime minister of the country and will take oath at 9 pm.
The decision was arrived at following a consensus between Gen-Z protesters, President Ram Chandra Paudel and army chief Ashok Raj Sigdel.
Sources said Ms Karki, who will create history by becoming the first woman prime minister of Nepal, will have a small cabinet in the caretaker government, and the first meeting will be held on Friday night itself. The cabinet is likely to recommend the dissolution of the federal parliament as well as all seven provincial parliaments.
After three days of protests, which were triggered by a ban on some social media platforms and anger against corruption, a consensus appeared to be building among the Gen-Z protesters on Wednesday around Ms Karki’s name to head a caretaker government until the next elections.
On Thursday, however, reports suggested that there were differences among the protesters and the name of Kulman Ghising, an engineer known for solving Nepal’s power crisis, was being put forward as the interim prime minister.
Kathmandu Mayor Balendra Shah – better known as Balen – a 35-year-old rapper-politician, was also seen as a key contender. Popular among most protesters, Mr Shah was not keen on taking on the role of interim prime minister, however, and had also endorsed Ms Karki.
Ms Karki was Nepal’s first woman chief justice and served between 2016 and 2017. She is popular among young Gen-Z protesters – who led a revolt against the KP Oli government, forcing him to resign on Tuesday – because of her tough stand on corruption during her tenure as a judge.
The former chief justice studied at the Banaras Hindu University and, in an interview with an Indian channel, said India has helped Nepal a lot.
