By Janardan Subedi
In Nepal, the night is the government’s favorite time to govern—or at least to pretend it does. In most countries, “late-night activity” means emergency meetings or urgent cabinet decisions. In Nepal, it increasingly means police jeeps rolling quietly through neighborhoods, executing arrests as if the Constitution were an afterthought and the streets a stage for improvisational theater. When Prime Minister Sushila Karki and Home Minister Aryal ordered the midnight arrest of Durga Prasai, the country was left asking the obvious question: Who gave you the authority to behave like undercover agents in your own democracy?
Because no document, not even the most imaginative reading of the Constitution, instructs the executive to arrest political irritants before sunrise. No parliamentary oversight committee whispered, “Psst, do it fast, do it dark.” No court issued an order with a timestamp that read: Valid between 12:01 AM and 4:59 AM only.
This was improvisation—pure, unscripted, uncoordinated improvisation. The kind performed not by statesmen but by those who mistake theatrics for governance.
But let us not be unfair. Midnight improvisation is not new in Nepali politics. If anything, it has become a sort of cultural craft. Our governments historically behave as if their authority increases in direct proportion to the sun going down. Daylight exposes the shabbiness of power; darkness gives it the illusion of competence. And illusions, more than institutions, have governed us for decades.
What makes this episode even more astonishing is the forgetfulness embedded in it. Only a few months ago, the same currents of public outrage, youth mobilization, and political disruption that shook the old guard are what pushed this government to the front row. People bled, protested, voted, and voiced their rage to produce a political outcome that—however imperfect—was intended as a corrective to the past.
But here we are again, watching a government behave like it inherited power from divine right rather than democratic upheaval. The irony is thick: the very public that placed these leaders in those chairs is now treated like an afterthought, as though collective amnesia is a constitutional requirement of citizenship.
It is almost poetic. In Nepal, transitions happen through people; betrayals happen through governments.
Someone once warned me—not jokingly, but as a sober prophecy—that one must never underestimate the blend of inexperience and impulsiveness in Madam Karki and her ever-faithful aide Om, who behaves more like a human extension of her office furniture than a political strategist. “Give them the country,” he said, “and they will run it like a brothel—chaotic, noisy, everyone claiming authority but nobody actually in control.”
I dismissed it at the time. Surely no leadership could be that reckless. But now? Let’s just say the evidence is stacking like unpaid electricity bills.
Political theorists from Weber to Tilly have long argued one obvious truth: strong states rely on predictable, transparent, legally grounded decisions. Weak states rely on surprise, intimidation, and last-minute improvisation. Midnight arrests, therefore, are not displays of strength. They are confessions of anxiety.
A confident government arrests in daylight. A panicked government arrests when the public is asleep.
This is not political philosophy; it is administrative psychology.
If a government believed that its decisions were rooted in law, legitimacy, and logic, it would announce them at press conferences, not execute them at hours associated with burglars. The act of arresting Durga Prasai at night tells us more about the fragility of the state than about the seriousness of the alleged offense. It is the mark of an insecure political regime—one that hopes darkness will obscure its own uncertainty.
There is a recurring myth in Nepali discussions: that tough leadership alone can discipline society. Singapore is usually invoked as the model—stern, uncompromising, efficient. But Singapore’s transformation did not begin with midnight raids. It began with economic governance—clean rules, predictable institutions, and an absolute intolerance for corruption inside the state.
Trust was not demanded; it was earned.
Authority was not improvised; it was institutionalized.
Order was not forced; it was built.
Nepal cuts this story in half and keeps only the part it likes—the performance of toughness—while ignoring the foundational part: competent economic management. Without fiscal integrity, regulatory discipline, and administrative efficiency, political toughness turns into mere theatrics.
You cannot copy Singapore’s discipline by copying its posture.
You must copy its institutions.
And institutions, unlike orders, cannot be shouted into existence.
What we are witnessing is not merely bad governance; it is a deeper sociological pattern—a political elite that repeatedly conflates coercion with competence. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would call this symbolic power without substance. The state performs authority instead of exercising it.
A midnight arrest sends a message, not of order, but of disarray. It tells citizens that the government does not trust its own daylight process, its own legal apparatus, or its own political legitimacy.
There is another uncomfortable truth: when leaders forget who placed them in power, they begin acting as though someone else is pulling the strings. The question then naturally arises:
Who is the master?
Because someone, somewhere, clearly has the remote control.
Nepalis are many things—emotional, chaotic, politically confused—but dumb is not one of them. The public sees through the performance. They always have. What they lack is not intelligence but the institutional tools to hold the powerful accountable.
Nepal’s political landscape resembles a traveling show—new tents, same tricks. The midnight arrest of Prasai is not unique; it is merely the latest episode in an ongoing serial in which governments alternate between paralysis and overreach with no middle ground.
If this government wanted to minimize Prasai’s influence, the strategy was obvious: ignore him. Nothing kills a political agitator faster than irrelevance. But the state, in its infinite talent for miscalculation, chose instead to inflate him into a martyr. They gave him what every firebrand dreams of: a dramatic narrative, a victimhood badge, and a spotlight.
One wonders whether anyone in the cabinet has ever read a single chapter of political strategy.
The tragedy is not that leaders make mistakes. All governments do. The tragedy is that our governments refuse to learn from theirs. They repeat the same errors with astonishing precision, as though bound by ritual rather than reason.
Arresting a political figure in the dark does not restore order.
It erodes confidence.
It exposes the government’s fear, not its strength.
Political legitimacy does not come from sirens at night.
It comes from governance in daylight.
So here we are, once again, in a country orbiting the same dilemmas, asking the same uncomfortable but necessary questions:
Who authorized a midnight arrest?
Who benefits from such decisions?
Who is pulling the strings behind the curtain?
And most importantly—
Do you genuinely believe the Nepali public is too naïve to see what is happening?
Because respect in politics begins with respecting the intelligence of the governed. Lose that, and everything else collapses.
Madam Karki, it appears you have entirely forgotten the very reason you were entrusted with the responsibility of interim Prime Minister—and why your aide now occupies the Home Ministry. I do not, for a moment, believe you suffer from any cognitive decline, but your political conduct increasingly resembles a kind of selective amnesia that afflicts those who grow too comfortable in borrowed authority. I genuinely hope this op-ed reaches you, though I suspect both you and your minister may find its arguments somewhat demanding. If so, perhaps someone within your circle—someone with a steadier grasp of governance than of theatrics—will translate and explain it to you.
And when they do, I hope it becomes clear that the most honorable path available is a simple one: step aside. Resign with whatever dignity still remains, and retreat to one of the serene monasteries around Kathmandu—those quiet sanctuaries from which most of us are politely excluded. There, in peace and silence, you may finally discover the reflection that power has denied you. Good luck.
If Nepal is ever to step out of this cycle of insecurity, it must build a state grounded in competence, not theatrics; legality, not improvisation; governance, not performance. The public is not asking for miracles. They are asking for clarity, transparency, and the basic dignity of being treated as thinking citizens.
Until then, we will remain trapped in the loop of governments that behave like night-time vigilantes and citizens who wake up each morning unsure whether the country is being run by institutions or impulses. Nepal deserves better. And it starts with power that functions without turning off the lights.
(Dr. Janardan Subedi is Professor of Sociology at Miami University, Ohio. He writes on political ethics, democratic transitions, and institutional accountability in South Asia.)
