Nepal, April 3 -- In constitutional democracies, the test of power is not merely whether it can be exercised but whether it can be exercised without compromising the integrity of the system through which it flows. That distinction between state power and process often recedes in moments of political rupture, when urgency (or, more populistically, 'promise') begins to masquerade as justification and decisiveness as legitimacy. Nepal appears to be entering such a moment with the recent appointment of Sudan Gurung as Home Minister. His appointment is a revealing test of the thresholds we are willing to accept, and quietly lower.

Gurung's rise has been as rapid as it has been contested. On the first day of the Gen Z protests, he publicly dis...