Background going into Nepal’s election

This is a valuable piece in Himal Southasian by Sanjeev Satgainya going over the key players in the March 5 election:

“Elections in a multi-party democracy are about political parties, but this election is also about something more – competing interpretations of how a democracy should function: quick and disruptive, procedural and reformist, or experienced and centralised.

The three figures currently dominating the national conversation exemplify these three interpretations: Balendra Shah, or “Balen”, of the upstart Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), an outsider to Nepal’s political establishment and a symbol of impatience with it; the Nepali Congress’s Gagan Thapa, an institutional reformist; and K P Sharma Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), ousted as prime minister by the September protests, a seasoned centraliser of executive power.”