KATHMANDU: In a first-of-its-kind world development, Nepal is the first country whose Prime Minister was chosen entirely via a social media platform, excluding traditional voting methods like manual polling or postal voting.
Following weeks of street demonstrations and political turbulence, the President, Prime Minister, and cabinet ministers resigned and fled the nation. Amid the resulting power vacuum, it was former Chief Justice Sushila Karki who was elected interim Prime Minister, not by parliament or the military, but by Gen Z activists on social media platform Discord.
The group that is behind this internet revolution, “Youth Against Corruption”, created a public Discord channel that also gained over 130,000 members. The website eventually became the main organizing site for the protests, offering fact-checking and later, voting.
The team held an online election on September 10 to select an interim leader. Sushila Karki received 3,833 (about 50%) votes out of 7,713 cast votes, winning the election convincingly. She subsequently met with Nepal’s President Ram Chandra Paudel and Army Chief Ashok Raj Sigdel and was sworn in.
Karki has committed to holding general elections by March 5, 2026, and handing over power to a democratically elected government in six months.
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It is the first time in world history that a head of state was chosen directly via a social media platform, here, Discord, a chat application meant for use primarily by gamers.
