Nepal, Sept. 26 -- The Balendra Shah government has been in power for nearly six months, and he is already under attack from both the opposition parties, which were cut down to size in the March 5 federal elections, and the Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) that Shah helped sweep with 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives. The RSP, which was only founded in July 2022, went to the polls projecting Shah as the next prime minister for five whole years and, for that reason, did as well as it did. People gave Shah, and the RSP, a five-year mandate in a landslide win, and we are in year one. Yet, both pre- and post-catastrophic August 26 Bhotekoshi flood, signs of intra-RSP fissures regularly hit the headlines.

Shah is not an origi...