Nepal, Feb. 17 -- Ahead of the March 5 elections, the candidate lists for direct elections reflect a betrayal of the progressive spirit supposed to define Nepal's post-Gen Z movement political landscape. Shying away from the movement's demand for change, political parties have retreated into a familiar, hardened hegemony, continuing to sideline marginalised groups from the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) electoral process.

The exclusion of the Dalit community, which constitutes 13.4 percent of the population, is particularly egregious. Across the 165 constituencies, the representation of Dalit candidates in direct elections is negligible: The Nepali Congress (NC) has fielded only one, the CPN-UML and the Nepali Communist Party (NCP) three eac...