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Nepal picks a new prime minister on a discord server days after social media ban

103 points by fivestones 1y ago

fivestones 1y ago
I thought it was super ironic that after the government of Nepal banned almost all social media platforms last week, this week the Gen Z protesters who overthrew the government used one of those platforms, discord, to choose a new prime minister. The person they picked is 73 year old Sushila Karki, who used to be a Cheif justice of the Supreme Court until she retired at age 65, and is the only woman to have ever held that position. She is also now the first and only female to run the country. The protests that overthrew the Nepali government this past week were started to protest corruption in government, and Karki is known for being fiercely against corruption as a judge. She was sworn in on Friday. Good luck to her. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o
michaelsshaw 1y ago
https://archive.ph/G3XjL https://archive.ph/G3XjL
banana_giraffe 1y ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-genz-discord.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lk8.uli5.8UmZLPUi2oFA&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-...
fivestones 1y ago
This also makes me wonder what could be done to make discord (or something similar) a better venue for direct democracy. I know the circumstances in Nepal were exceptional, but I wonder if we will see other countries experiment with Discord for similar purposes. It seems like in Nepal they have essentially used it as a caucus, and I wonder if this could be shaped into a better way to elect leaders (or even legislate directly) than what most of the world is doing. My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.
- sinuhe69 1y ago
  Liquid democracy is a total viable platform. But Discord is better in so far as it can be used for all kinds of things and conversations, not just for voting or debates.
- stavros 1y ago
  I agree, but I don't know if a closed platform could ever be suitable for this.
- 3np 1y ago
  Seems a bit vulnerable to subversion of the host (and/or its government) once they decide to pay attention (or even through negligence; imagine a minister being banned because of some ML false-positive). If the format is to be sustainable, they will need to find or found a different platform.
- perihelions 1y ago
  > "in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done" How is one faction holding an internal vote to impose rule on the rest of the people, who have no representation, anything at all like a democracy?
  - buzzin__ 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - highwaylights 1y ago
    In one sense representative democracy is mob rule scaled up, but yeah this is mob rule scaled way down then applied to everyone else without representation. (“democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." etc)
  - griffzhowl 1y ago
FilosofumRex 1y ago
[flagged]
- kryptiskt 1y ago
  It's kind of ironic that a nominally communistic government doesn't believe that the people have agency to act on their own, guess it reflects their own fears. I hope Xi lies sleepless at night worrying about the Chinese people getting rid of him.
  - FilosofumRex 1y ago
    Discord servers and its most active users were paid NGO workers of Samata Foundation and Hami Nepal, which are very well funded NGOs by The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is in turn funded by the US Congress and run by the CIA
    - baq 1y ago
      Ni hao from every Confucius Institute establishment ever. Expect such behavior from everyone everywhere, it’s basic game theory.
  - StefanBatory 1y ago
    It is. Communists are just imperialists in a red coat of paint. They do not believe that people can act on their own, everything is a conspiracy to them. Because why you would rebel against their utopia? Not worth arguing with them. Cast them to the dustbin of history where they belong.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    Historically, China backed the monarchy (the royal family excluding Gyanendra never really forgave Nehru and Indira Gandhi for abolishing and then nationalizing royal property, as the Shah family continues to only marry Hindu royalty within their caste along with their historic antipathy to a monarchist Hindu Rashtra leading to the INC backing the Nepali Congress and Vanarasi-raised and ideologically Gandhian Koirala brothers) and KP Sharma Oli's Marxist communist faction, while India backed the Prachanda Path communists and the Nepali Congress (NC). After the move to democratization, India continued to back NC and Prachanda (eg. He and his wife are/were devoted followers of BJP-aligned Baba Ramdev [0][1][2]), but KP Sharma Oli's faction continued to lean pro-China, as he and his peers started their revolutionary path during the Naxalbari uprising [3]. The monarchists (RPP) on the other hand switched to being more India leaning after Yogi Adityanath - the religious leader of the Gorakhnath Math which is heavily patronized by the royal family and Pahari Hindus from Kathmandu to Kashmir - became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Last year, the NC surprised everyone by collapsing Prachanda's government and making an alliance with KP Sharma Oli. Based on how prominent Maoist Center (Prachanda), RSP, and RPP party workers have been during the protests and even within the discord, I am starting to suspect this was a repeat of the Rajapaksa-Siresena episode in Sri Lanka in the sense that a significant faction was used to undermine the China leaning Oli government. Sushila Karki is viewed as fairy pro-India - the town she's from is for all intents and purposes Bihar, and she studied at the PoliSci department at Banaras Hindu University during the JP Andolan and when several future Indian political leaders were studying at BHU as well. China also hasn't congratulated her yet but the Indian government did almost immediately after the announcement. Of course, we will only find out once Karki's cabinet is announced. [0] - https://english.khabarhub.com/2019/20/63249/ https://english.khabarhub.com/2019/20/63249/ [1] - https://english.makalukhabar.com/ramdev-arrives-at-prachandas-residence-khumaltar-wishes-for-sitas-recovery-photos/ https://english.makalukhabar.com/ramdev-arrives-at-prachanda... [2] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/prachanda-fellow-maoists-flock-to-ramdev-s-camp/story-MnQni5gxv15UM51KwZN1yJ.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/prachanda-fellow-maoist... [3] - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b959a806-fd27-4c20-bfb3-a26601c0dfcd/files/mb5513ccc12341ff669b54c0afa6604a9 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b959a806-fd27-4c20-bfb3-a2...
seydor 1y ago
i ve been waiting for democracies to go digital for ages. We should be electing mayors like that too. there s no reason for all this gatekeeping and secrecy in politics other than to enable corruption
- mfru 1y ago
  because there is no safe way to vote digitally
  - esseph 1y ago
    Funny, don't you bank digitally?
    - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
      I do, but I certainly don't consider it safe.
    - gus_massa 1y ago
      Bank transactions are not anonymous. A big advance in elections has been the secret vote.
- croon 1y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's two competing issues here: 1) You could make digital elections secure with issued digital IDs, and simply recording everyone's vote and it would be easily auditable. But no one wants elections where (the contents of) your vote is recorded somewhere. So 2) You use your digital ID to be able to vote once, but if you're no longer connected to your vote, it would be much more susceptible to tampering if you can't establish a double blind chain of custody of the votes, which is what expensive in person voting is doing very well. The first option would be great if you could somehow guarantee a corruption free future of your country where no one will come after you for your vote (hint: you can't).
  - fivestones 1y ago
Yeul 1y ago
Just wait until you hear America picked a president because of a TV show...
- mrits 1y ago
  A little education would go a long way here
  - fredoliveira 1y ago
    Let's be honest: he had no other credentials when he decided to run.
    - mrits 1y ago
      That has nothing to do with the original statement
- Timwi 1y ago
  As did Ukraine!
- hackeraccount 1y ago
  Would that the country were as simple as electing someone because of a TV show.
grumple 1y ago
A discord server with 150k people whose identity or nation of origin are not verified, where only 8000 people voted. This is as illegitimate an election as they come. Come literally just have been elected by Russian (or any other) bots.
- 113 1y ago
  Presumably if people aren't happy about it they'll just continue to revolt.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  You'd be surprised, but there are numerous governments that claim to be democratic - while having a much weaker claim to democracy than "the current acting prime minister was elected by 8000 unverified randos in a snap election online". Outside the comfy first world, the bar for government sanity can get extremely low.
- schrototo 1y ago
  It wasn’t an election. One of the more prominent youth groups involved in the protests used Discord to organize and decide internally which leader they should endorse and suggest to the president and army leadership. No one was directly elected on Discord.
- ytch 1y ago
  Military of Nepal want to make an agreement with the activists, rather than the Nepali. Therefore activists need suggesting a representative of the groups. IMHO a private voting is fine in this case.
jongjong 1y ago
I'm hereby announcing my candidacy for world leader. I'll be running on a populist platform of self-enrichment. My first executive order will be to give myself access to unlimited money. Then I will use the money to acquire and/or launch tech companies and use price-gouging and predatory lending techniques to run all major corporations out of business. Then I will proclaim myself "The most cunning entrepreneur in the world" and I will write a book and give inspirational talks about how I did it all by myself without any special advantage. Then I will offer compulsory business advice to all the CEOs of the corporations (which I would have bankrupted) to explain to them that it's their fault they went bankrupt and should have worked harder.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  If you politician bastards would just stick to your promises, I'd vote for you.
londons_explore 1y ago
It's unclear if interim leaders should exist at all Wouldn't it be best for the country to be leaderless, with no laws being made and all existing government departments continuing their work under the same set of budgets and instructions as before until a new leader is selected by the election department?
- qgin 1y ago
  Even with no new laws, most countries still have non-automatic decisions to be made just as part of the structure.
  - londons_explore 1y ago
    But I guess they shouldn't... Ie. The goal of lawmakers should always be to, at any given point, have a set of laws such that the country will continue for as long as possible with no further laws. Ie. Perhaps do budgets by percentage of GDP rather than fixed amounts.
    - griffzhowl 1y ago
      It's not just about making new laws, but also running the executive branch institutions such as the police, intelligence, and military. It depends on the country's constitution, but Nepal is supposed to have a civilian authority at the head of these. The alternative would be to have left all this in the hands of the military
cadamsdotcom 1y ago
I highly recommend anyone interested in these processes read “The Democratic Coup”. It tries to explain the circumstances where a coup such as this can lead to democracy. Key interesting example include Portugal in 1974 ... and the American Revolution against the British. It’s happened before and it could well happen again here. My heart goes out to the protestors. May they fill the power vacuum with strong leaders who can make their country better for future generations.

103 points by fivestones 1y ago

I thought it was super ironic that after the government of Nepal banned almost all social media platforms last week, this week the Gen Z protesters who overthrew the government used one of those platforms, discord, to choose a new prime minister. The person they picked is 73 year old Sushila Karki, who used to be a Cheif justice of the Supreme Court until she retired at age 65, and is the only woman to have ever held that position. She is also now the first and only female to run the country. The protests that overthrew the Nepali government this past week were started to protest corruption in government, and Karki is known for being fiercely against corruption as a judge. She was sworn in on Friday. Good luck to her. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c179qne0zw0o

michaelsshaw 1y ago

https://archive.ph/G3XjL https://archive.ph/G3XjL

banana_giraffe 1y ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-genz-discord.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lk8.uli5.8UmZLPUi2oFA&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/world/asia/nepal-protest-...

fivestones 1y ago

This also makes me wonder what could be done to make discord (or something similar) a better venue for direct democracy. I know the circumstances in Nepal were exceptional, but I wonder if we will see other countries experiment with Discord for similar purposes. It seems like in Nepal they have essentially used it as a caucus, and I wonder if this could be shaped into a better way to elect leaders (or even legislate directly) than what most of the world is doing. My wife and I were talking about this today and we thought it's possible that what has just happened in Nepal is at least in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done.

sinuhe69 1y ago
Liquid democracy is a total viable platform. But Discord is better in so far as it can be used for all kinds of things and conversations, not just for voting or debates.
stavros 1y ago
I agree, but I don't know if a closed platform could ever be suitable for this.
3np 1y ago
Seems a bit vulnerable to subversion of the host (and/or its government) once they decide to pay attention (or even through negligence; imagine a minister being banned because of some ML false-positive). If the format is to be sustainable, they will need to find or found a different platform.
perihelions 1y ago
> "in some sense the most democratic thing any country has ever done" How is one faction holding an internal vote to impose rule on the rest of the people, who have no representation, anything at all like a democracy?
- buzzin__ 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- highwaylights 1y ago
  In one sense representative democracy is mob rule scaled up, but yeah this is mob rule scaled way down then applied to everyone else without representation. (“democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." etc)
- griffzhowl 1y ago

FilosofumRex 1y ago

[flagged]

kryptiskt 1y ago
It's kind of ironic that a nominally communistic government doesn't believe that the people have agency to act on their own, guess it reflects their own fears. I hope Xi lies sleepless at night worrying about the Chinese people getting rid of him.
- FilosofumRex 1y ago
  Discord servers and its most active users were paid NGO workers of Samata Foundation and Hami Nepal, which are very well funded NGOs by The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is in turn funded by the US Congress and run by the CIA
  - baq 1y ago
    Ni hao from every Confucius Institute establishment ever. Expect such behavior from everyone everywhere, it’s basic game theory.
- StefanBatory 1y ago
  It is. Communists are just imperialists in a red coat of paint. They do not believe that people can act on their own, everything is a conspiracy to them. Because why you would rebel against their utopia? Not worth arguing with them. Cast them to the dustbin of history where they belong.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  Historically, China backed the monarchy (the royal family excluding Gyanendra never really forgave Nehru and Indira Gandhi for abolishing and then nationalizing royal property, as the Shah family continues to only marry Hindu royalty within their caste along with their historic antipathy to a monarchist Hindu Rashtra leading to the INC backing the Nepali Congress and Vanarasi-raised and ideologically Gandhian Koirala brothers) and KP Sharma Oli's Marxist communist faction, while India backed the Prachanda Path communists and the Nepali Congress (NC). After the move to democratization, India continued to back NC and Prachanda (eg. He and his wife are/were devoted followers of BJP-aligned Baba Ramdev [0][1][2]), but KP Sharma Oli's faction continued to lean pro-China, as he and his peers started their revolutionary path during the Naxalbari uprising [3]. The monarchists (RPP) on the other hand switched to being more India leaning after Yogi Adityanath - the religious leader of the Gorakhnath Math which is heavily patronized by the royal family and Pahari Hindus from Kathmandu to Kashmir - became the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Last year, the NC surprised everyone by collapsing Prachanda's government and making an alliance with KP Sharma Oli. Based on how prominent Maoist Center (Prachanda), RSP, and RPP party workers have been during the protests and even within the discord, I am starting to suspect this was a repeat of the Rajapaksa-Siresena episode in Sri Lanka in the sense that a significant faction was used to undermine the China leaning Oli government. Sushila Karki is viewed as fairy pro-India - the town she's from is for all intents and purposes Bihar, and she studied at the PoliSci department at Banaras Hindu University during the JP Andolan and when several future Indian political leaders were studying at BHU as well. China also hasn't congratulated her yet but the Indian government did almost immediately after the announcement. Of course, we will only find out once Karki's cabinet is announced. [0] - https://english.khabarhub.com/2019/20/63249/ https://english.khabarhub.com/2019/20/63249/ [1] - https://english.makalukhabar.com/ramdev-arrives-at-prachandas-residence-khumaltar-wishes-for-sitas-recovery-photos/ https://english.makalukhabar.com/ramdev-arrives-at-prachanda... [2] - https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/prachanda-fellow-maoists-flock-to-ramdev-s-camp/story-MnQni5gxv15UM51KwZN1yJ.html https://www.hindustantimes.com/world/prachanda-fellow-maoist... [3] - https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b959a806-fd27-4c20-bfb3-a26601c0dfcd/files/mb5513ccc12341ff669b54c0afa6604a9 https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b959a806-fd27-4c20-bfb3-a2...

seydor 1y ago

i ve been waiting for democracies to go digital for ages. We should be electing mayors like that too. there s no reason for all this gatekeeping and secrecy in politics other than to enable corruption

mfru 1y ago
because there is no safe way to vote digitally
- esseph 1y ago
  Funny, don't you bank digitally?
  - Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    I do, but I certainly don't consider it safe.
  - gus_massa 1y ago
    Bank transactions are not anonymous. A big advance in elections has been the secret vote.
croon 1y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's two competing issues here: 1) You could make digital elections secure with issued digital IDs, and simply recording everyone's vote and it would be easily auditable. But no one wants elections where (the contents of) your vote is recorded somewhere. So 2) You use your digital ID to be able to vote once, but if you're no longer connected to your vote, it would be much more susceptible to tampering if you can't establish a double blind chain of custody of the votes, which is what expensive in person voting is doing very well. The first option would be great if you could somehow guarantee a corruption free future of your country where no one will come after you for your vote (hint: you can't).
- fivestones 1y ago

Yeul 1y ago

Just wait until you hear America picked a president because of a TV show...

mrits 1y ago
A little education would go a long way here
- fredoliveira 1y ago
  Let's be honest: he had no other credentials when he decided to run.
  - mrits 1y ago
    That has nothing to do with the original statement
Timwi 1y ago
As did Ukraine!
hackeraccount 1y ago
Would that the country were as simple as electing someone because of a TV show.

grumple 1y ago

A discord server with 150k people whose identity or nation of origin are not verified, where only 8000 people voted. This is as illegitimate an election as they come. Come literally just have been elected by Russian (or any other) bots.

113 1y ago
Presumably if people aren't happy about it they'll just continue to revolt.
ACCount37 1y ago
You'd be surprised, but there are numerous governments that claim to be democratic - while having a much weaker claim to democracy than "the current acting prime minister was elected by 8000 unverified randos in a snap election online". Outside the comfy first world, the bar for government sanity can get extremely low.
schrototo 1y ago
It wasn’t an election. One of the more prominent youth groups involved in the protests used Discord to organize and decide internally which leader they should endorse and suggest to the president and army leadership. No one was directly elected on Discord.
ytch 1y ago
Military of Nepal want to make an agreement with the activists, rather than the Nepali. Therefore activists need suggesting a representative of the groups. IMHO a private voting is fine in this case.

jongjong 1y ago

I'm hereby announcing my candidacy for world leader. I'll be running on a populist platform of self-enrichment. My first executive order will be to give myself access to unlimited money. Then I will use the money to acquire and/or launch tech companies and use price-gouging and predatory lending techniques to run all major corporations out of business. Then I will proclaim myself "The most cunning entrepreneur in the world" and I will write a book and give inspirational talks about how I did it all by myself without any special advantage. Then I will offer compulsory business advice to all the CEOs of the corporations (which I would have bankrupted) to explain to them that it's their fault they went bankrupt and should have worked harder.

Ylpertnodi 1y ago
If you politician bastards would just stick to your promises, I'd vote for you.

londons_explore 1y ago

It's unclear if interim leaders should exist at all Wouldn't it be best for the country to be leaderless, with no laws being made and all existing government departments continuing their work under the same set of budgets and instructions as before until a new leader is selected by the election department?

qgin 1y ago
Even with no new laws, most countries still have non-automatic decisions to be made just as part of the structure.
- londons_explore 1y ago
  But I guess they shouldn't... Ie. The goal of lawmakers should always be to, at any given point, have a set of laws such that the country will continue for as long as possible with no further laws. Ie. Perhaps do budgets by percentage of GDP rather than fixed amounts.
  - griffzhowl 1y ago
    It's not just about making new laws, but also running the executive branch institutions such as the police, intelligence, and military. It depends on the country's constitution, but Nepal is supposed to have a civilian authority at the head of these. The alternative would be to have left all this in the hands of the military

cadamsdotcom 1y ago

I highly recommend anyone interested in these processes read “The Democratic Coup”. It tries to explain the circumstances where a coup such as this can lead to democracy. Key interesting example include Portugal in 1974 ... and the American Revolution against the British. It’s happened before and it could well happen again here. My heart goes out to the protestors. May they fill the power vacuum with strong leaders who can make their country better for future generations.