Former Rapper's Party Scores Huge Win in Nepal

A political party created just four years ago and led by an ex-rapper has swept Nepal's parliamentary poll, results published by the electoral commission on Thursday showed. The election, the country's first since last year's youth-led revolt, was won by the Rastriya Swatantra Party, or RSP, of rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, the AP reports. The 35-year-old former civil engineer is expected to become the country's next prime minister.

• The RSP won 125 directly elected seats plus a further 57 as part of the proportional representation votes, giving it a total of 182 seats in the 275-member House of Representatives, the powerful lower chamber of parliament. The Nepali Congress party came second, with 38 seats.

• In Nepal, voters directly elect 165 members to the House of Representatives. The remaining 110 seats are allocated through a proportional representation system, under which political parties are assigned seats based on their share of the vote. The process is likely to take several days before the country gets a new government.
• The system is designed to prevent domination by a single party, making the RSP's landslide win "all the more significant," the BBC reports.
• Shah, who is the RSP's prime ministerial candidate, won the 2022 Kathmandu mayoral race. He emerged as a leading figure in the 2025 uprising that ousted former Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli. In the election, Shah defeated Oli, 74, in his own constituency.

• The RSP, which was founded in 2022, gained huge support in the parliamentary election, posing a strong challenge to two long-dominant parties—the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist).
• Last year's protests against corruption and poor governance were triggered by a social media ban before snowballing into a popular revolt against the government. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds more injured when protesters attacked government buildings and police opened fire on them.
• Shah's music had long targeted the same issues that led to the protests, Al Jazeera reports. His song "Nepal Haseko" had more than 10 million views on YouTube during the unrest.