Kathmandu, Nepal – As Nepal burned on Thursday after two days of deadly unrest that ousted a government accused of corruption, thousands of young people gathered in a heated debate to decide their nation’s next leader.
To them, the country’s mainstream politicians across the major parties were discredited: 14 governments representing three parties have taken turns at governing since 2008, when Nepal adopted a new constitution after abolishing its monarchy.
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But in the wake of a brutal crackdown on protesters by security forces that killed at least 72 people, their trust in the country’s political system itself had been shattered. They wanted to select a consensus leader who would steer the country of 30 million people out of chaos and take steps towards stamping out corruption and nepotism. Just not in the way countries usually pick their heads.
So, they chose Nepal’s next leader in a manner unprecedented for any electoral democracy – through a virtual poll on Discord, a United States-based free messaging platform mainly used by online gamers.
The online huddle was organised by Hami Nepal, a Gen Z group behind the protest with more than 160,000 members.
Hami Nepal ran a channel on the platform called Youth Against Corruption, where a fiery debate on the country’s future brought together more than 10,000 people, including many from the Nepali diaspora. As more people tried to log in and failed, a mirrored livestream was held on YouTube to allow about 6,000 more people to see the debate.
After hours of debate that included difficult questions for protest leaders and attempts at reaching out to potential prime minister candidates in real time, the participants chose former Supreme Court Chief Justice Sushila Karki to lead Nepal. The 73-year-old took the oath of office as the country’s interim prime minister on Friday.
But Nepal’s transition is only beginning, say analysts, and the approach protesters took to choose the country’s leader only underscores how a chaotic new experiment in democracy appears to be under way, with rewards as well as risks.
‘Trying to figure it out together’
The Discord debate was a revolutionary counter to the traditional practice of politicians choosing leaders behind closed doors, which had displayed little transparency, say supporters of the Discord approach.
Discord enables users to connect through texts, voice calls, video calls and media sharing. It also allows communication through direct messages or within community spaces known as servers. It was one of the platforms banned by the government earlier this month alongside two dozen other popular applications, including Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
The ban, protesters said, was the last straw that spiralled into a nationwide movement against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s government. The demonstrators accused it of being unrepresentative of young people, as well as of widespread corruption and nepotism.
Tens of thousands of young protesters hit the streets on Tuesday, torching government buildings, including the parliament and residences of top politicians, and forcing Oli to resign. On Friday, President Ramchandra Paudel dissolved parliament and called for a general election in March.
By then, Nepal’s Gen Z protesters had turned to Discord to decide who should lead their nation until March. The social media ban was lifted after the killings earlier in the week.
Virtual polls on mobile screens allowed participants to nominate their interim leader in real time, marking a radical experiment in digital democracy.
“People were learning as they went,” said 25-year-old law graduate Regina Basnet, a protester who had then joined the Discord debate. “Many of us didn’t know what it meant to dissolve parliament or form an interim government. But we were asking questions, getting answers from experts, and trying to figure it out together.”
The discussion revolved around a wide range of issues Nepal must battle now, including jobs, police and university reforms, as well as the state of government healthcare, as the moderators urged the participants to focus on the main question before them: the next leader.
Five names were shortlisted for the final voting: Harka Sampang, a social activist and mayor of the eastern city of Dharan; Mahabir Pun, a popular social activist running the National Innovation Centre; Sagar Dhakal, an independent politician who ran against the powerful Nepali Congress leader, Sher Bahadur Deuba, in 2022; advocate Rastra Bimochan Timalsina, also known as Random Nepali on his YouTube channel, who has been advising the Gen Z protesters; and Karki.
Karki, who emerged as the winner of the poll, had campaigned for an independent judiciary during her brief tenure as chief justice from 2016 to 2017. In 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a serving minister for corruption. In 2017, the government unsuccessfully tried to impeach her as chief justice after she rejected its choice for police chief.
That history added to her credentials in the eyes of the Discord voters.
“The situation that I have come in, I have not wished to come here. My name was brought from the streets,” she said in an address to the nation after assuming office. “We will not stay here more than six months in any situation. We will complete our responsibilities and pledge to hand over to the next parliament and ministers.”
Many people who took part in the Discord debate also suggested Balen Shah, the popular rapper-turned-mayor of Kathmandu, as their choice for interim prime minister. The Hami Nepal moderators informed the participants they could not reach Shah, who later posted his endorsement of Karki on social media.
Many in Nepal believe Shah could be a frontrunner for the prime minister’s post in the March 5 elections.
‘Much more egalitarian’
Aayush Bashyal, who was part of the Discord discussions, told Al Jazeera he witnessed a “spectrum of understanding, and it was all ‘trial and error’”.
“Some people would come and belittle the ideas, which would paralyse the conversation. However, it was absolutely the need of the moment, and was an impromptu common ground to bring as many voices as possible,” he said.
Bashyal said some in the Discord forum also called for a restoration of Nepal’s monarchy, which was abolished in 2006 after a decade-long rebellion by left-wing forces in the country.
“There was also a pro-monarchy Discord group going on side by side. Sometimes, people would share the screenshots from their chats,” the 27-year-old student of public administration at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University told Al Jazeera. He branded the pro-monarchy group as “infiltrators”.
In the same forum, some Gen Z participants even questioned the legitimacy of the protest leaders. “You made the agenda, but we don’t know you. How we can trust you is also another issue,” one participant said.
Other issues that came up during the deliberations included investigating the killings of protesters and cracking down on corruption.
‘This is the future’
Pranaya Rana, a journalist who sends out the popular Kalam Weekly newsletter to more than 4,300 subscribers, said that using Discord made sense for a Gen Z-led movement, but that it also came with challenges.
“It is much more egalitarian than a physical forum that many might not have access to. Since it is virtual and anonymous, people can also say what they want to without fear of retaliation,” he told Al Jazeera. “But there are also challenges, in that anyone could easily manipulate users by infiltration, and using multiple accounts to sway opinions and votes.”
Aware of how misinformation, fake news and rumours could derail such movements, the Gen Z leaders also launched a sub-room called “fact checks” on their Discord discussion page.
Among the things they debunked was a photo showing protest leader Sudan Gurung, the chief negotiator for the formation of the interim government, with Arzu Rana Deuba, the ousted foreign minister. The picture was falsely claimed to have been taken a week before, when it was actually from an event that had happened six months earlier. Gurung had met the minister to demand justice for a Nepali student who had died by suicide after he was allegedly harassed at an engineering college in neighbouring India’s Odisha state.
There were also rumours that Gurung was not a Nepali citizen, but from Darjeeling, a hill town in eastern India. A copy of his Nepali citizenship card was released in the Discord discussion room and on social media.
The Gen Z organisers also debunked claims that former King Gyanendra had met the protesters. It was found that an old video of Nepal’s last monarch interacting with youngsters was being shared on social media.
It was also discovered that multiple social media handles and profiles claiming to be the “official” youth movement had contributed to some confusion on the ground. On Thursday night, a Gen Z leader was even seen calling a Nepal military officer on the phone, warning him against potential royal interference in the formation of the next government.
Rana, the journalist, said the protest leaders made good use of technology, “something that Gen Z is best at”.
“This is the future. We can either remain in the days of giving speeches on stages with mics or get used to talking freely on online platforms,” he told Al Jazeera.
“Gen Z is naive, but that’s to be expected. They are young, but they have shown a willingness to learn, and that’s the important part.”
Anticorruption activist and the former president of Transparency International Nepal, Padmini Pradhanang, urged Gen Z protest leaders to work on what the previous governments “miserably failed at – integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance”.
“These young people have only experienced kleptocracy. They have never seen true democracy or good governance,” she said.
But law graduate Basnet is not sure.
“At first, it was a peaceful protest. The mood was celebratory. But the state-ordered carnage later was traumatising… The uprising and burning of private and public properties was scary, and then, with people participating in a discussion on social media to form the government has only added to the confusion,” she told Al Jazeera.
“All these events that unfolded worry me.”