Kathmandu, Sept. 8 -- It's been over a year and a half since the government of Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli came to power-the first government in the history of modern Nepal to have a comfortable two-thirds majority in Parliament, especially after the merger of Oli's CPN-UML party with the Maoist party of Pushpa Kamal Dahal. After decades of political instability, here was a government that had a clear and stable mandate for the next five years. This stability had given people hope, but so far, little has come of it.

Unpopular bills and attempts to stifle dissent both in government and within the ruling Nepal Communist Party have been roundly criticised by the breadth of the political spectrum, from the opposition Nepali Congress to diss...