Ex-rapper Balendra Shah's party wins Nepal election in landslide

A three-year-old ​party won Nepal’s general elections by a landslide, positioning its candidate Balendra Shah to become the next prime minister, with a mandate for the rapper-turned-politician to restore political stability. The March 5 election was the Himalayan nation’s first vote since demonstrations against corruption last September led by Gen Z protesters that killed 77 people and toppled the government.The Rastriya Swatantra Party of Balendra Shah, a 35-year-old former civil engineer and hip-hop artist known simply as “Balen”, secured 182 seats in the 275-member lower house of parliament, the Election Commission said on Thursday, with 125 won directly and a further 57 through proportional representation. The largest majority of any party in more than six decades. “We are encouraged by the victory,” said newly-elected lawmaker Sisir Khanal, a senior leader of the winning RSP. “The mandate has made us very responsible.” 
The election has been dominated by Shah, the former mayor of ​Kathmandu, the capital, whose rap music critical of the establishment gained him near-rockstar-like fame on social media. He is the first politician expected to become prime minister who hails from the southern plains, known as Madhesh, where smaller regional groups failed to win a single seat. His RSP canvassed on a programme to fight graft, create jobs and more than double the $42 billion-economy in five years. Shah, whose music had long targeted those same grievances, emerged as a figurehead of the unrest, his song Nepal Haseko, or Nepal Smiling, accumulating more than 10 million YouTube views during the turmoil.
The Nepali Congress party finished in second place, with 38 seats. The Marxist party of veteran four-time Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli, whose government was ousted in a youth-led uprising last year, won just 25 seats. After Nepali Congress leaders demanded their party leadership step down following the party's debacle in the March 5 snap parliamentary elections, CPN-UML leaders are also facing internal pressure to do the same. UML Deputy General Secretary Yogesh Bhattarai has suggested that Oli step down, warning the party could face unexpected consequences if he continues.