When she first became the country’s president in Octo­ber 2015, Bidya Devi Bhandari was the vice-chairman of CPN-UML and the head of its women’s wing. Bhandari has risen steadily up the party hierarchy ever since she defeated Nepali Congress heavyweight, Krishna Prasad Bhattarai, in a 1993 by-election. The by-election was held to fill the seat vacated by her husband, the charismatic UML general secretary Madan Bhandari, who had died in a jeep accident earlier that year. Bidya Devi Bhandari, née Pandey, had started her polit­ical career as a student leader in the 1970s, before joining what was then CPN-ML in 1980. Two years later, Bidya Devi married CPN-ML General Secretary Madan Bhandari. Used to living in the long shadow of her husband, she set about carving out her own space in the party after his abrupt death.

 

As her political stature grew, so did her ambitions. In 2009, she got the defense portfolio in the Madav Nepal government. Her term as defense minister is perhaps best remembered for her cozy relations with the Nepal Army high command.

 

Her two-year first term as president was also checkered. She had a knack of making headlines for all the wrong rea­sons: her rather lavish spending, ‘needless’ foreign trips and for causing infernal traffic jams in the already congested roads of the capital. Then, near the end of her first term, she caused a stir by holding up the Sher Bahadur Deuba govern­ment’s three nominees for the federal upper house. But when her party chief, KP Sharma Oli, who in his later capacity as prime minister named his own set of three national assembly members, she quickly approved the new nominees.

 

Many say Bhandari did not deserve a second term. Suppos­edly, her only qualification was that party chief Oli had taken her under his wing. This is why, as Oli now enjoys near-abso­lute powers with a three-fourth majority in the federal lower house, as well as effective control over all seven provinces, Bhandari’s next five years as the country’s ceremonial head will be closely watched. Oli could easily use her office to cement his control over all levers of government.

 

“Oli now has effective control over all state organs, includ­ing the presidency,” says Radheshyam Adhikari, a Nepali Congress MP in National Assembly, the federal upper house. “If you look at Bhandari’s actions during her first term, for instance her unconstitutional blocking of important ordi­nances, there are signs she cannot rise above party interests.”

 

But others may contend it would be wrong to judge Bhan­dari-the-president so harshly when she is just a small part of Nepal’s patronage-driven politics.