Katmandu: Girija Prasad Koirala, the aged and ailing politician poised to become Nepal's next prime minister, has been one of the most powerful forces in the country's tumultuous political scene since democracy was introduced in 1990.
Koirala, 84, has been a politician for decades, a prime minister four times and is the head of the country's largest political party.
He has been a hero of the democratic movement—spending seven years in prison in the 1960s for fighting for democratic rule—and a symbol of the tiny political class that took hold of Nepal after 1990 and left many people here badly disillusioned with their politicians.
On Tuesday, leaders of the seven-party alliance that will lead the new government said Koirala, a one-time labor organiser and member of a prominent Nepalese family, was their choice as the next prime minister.
King Gyanendra, who seized direct power last year, on Monday ordered Parliament reinstated in an attempt to end weeks of bloody protests that shook his country deeply and threatened to force him from office.
Koirala, who suffers from heart problems, hypertension and asthma, is known as an autocrat when it comes to party loyalty—a man who has often quashed dissidence in his party with an iron fist.
In 1991, Koirala became prime minister of the first democratically elected government after a popular revolt ended absolute rule by the king.
Democracy, though, didn't prove calm for Nepal, and eight governments assumed office during the years between Koirala's first stint as prime minister and the last—when he resigned in 2001.
Public distrust of Nepal's bickering and often-corrupt political clique rocketed during that time, to the point where many Nepalese at first supported Gyanendra when he seized power last year. That support, though, quickly died away amid continuing Maoist violence and a plunging economy.
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Koirala's last term ended in 2001, with his government beset by the Maoist insurgency, a bribery scandal and recriminations over a palace massacre that wiped out much of the royal family.
His government wasn't implicated in the killings—in which the king, queen and seven other royal family members died, apparently at the hands of the crown prince, who killed himself—but the massacre shocked and dismayed Nepal, and blame for security lapses fell on Koirala.
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