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‘MORE EGALITARIAN’: HOW NEPAL’S GEN Z USED GAMING APP DISCORD
TO PICK PM  
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Samik Kharel
September 15, 2025
Al Jazeera
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_ It was a first for an electoral democracy. Backers say it is more
transparent than what politicians do. But it has risks. _

A government building set on fire by protesters in Nepal's capital,
Kathmandu, on September 9, 2025, Samik Kharel/Al Jazeera

 

KATHMANDU, NEPAL – As Nepal burned on Thursday after two days of
deadly unrest that ousted a government accused of corruption,
thousands of young people gathered in a heated debate to decide their
nation’s next leader.

To them, the country’s mainstream politicians across the major
parties were discredited: 14 governments representing three parties
have taken turns at governing since 2008, when Nepal adopted a new
constitution after abolishing its monarchy.

But in the wake of a brutal crackdown on protesters by security forces
that killed at least 72 people, their trust in the country’s
political system itself had been shattered. They wanted to select a
consensus leader who would steer the country of 30 million people out
of chaos and take steps towards stamping out corruption and
nepotism. Just not in the way countries usually pick their heads.

So, they chose Nepal’s next leader in a manner unprecedented for any
electoral democracy – through a virtual poll on Discord, a United
States-based free messaging platform mainly used by online gamers.

The online huddle was organised by Hami Nepal, a Gen Z group behind
the protest with more than 160,000 members.

Hami Nepal ran a channel on the platform called Youth Against
Corruption, where a fiery debate on the country’s future brought
together more than 10,000 people, including many from the Nepali
diaspora. As more people tried to log in and failed, a mirrored
livestream was held on YouTube to allow about 6,000 more people to see
the debate.

[Nepal Discord]

[Screenshots from the Discord debate on next Nepal leader]

After hours of debate that included difficult questions for protest
leaders and attempts at reaching out to potential prime minister
candidates in real time, the participants chose former Supreme Court
Chief Justice Sushila Karki
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to lead Nepal. The 73-year-old took the oath of office as the
country’s interim prime minister on Friday.

But Nepal’s transition is only beginning, say analysts, and the
approach protesters took to choose the country’s leader only
underscores how a chaotic new experiment in democracy appears to be
under way, with rewards as well as risks.

‘Trying to figure it out together’

The Discord debate was a revolutionary counter to the traditional
practice of politicians choosing leaders behind closed doors, which
had displayed little transparency, say supporters of the Discord
approach.

Discord enables users to connect through texts, voice calls, video
calls and media sharing. It also allows communication through direct
messages or within community spaces known as servers. It was one of
the platforms banned by the government earlier this month alongside
two dozen other popular applications, including Instagram, Twitter and
YouTube.

The ban, protesters said, was the last straw that spiralled into a
nationwide movement against Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s
government. The demonstrators accused it of being unrepresentative of
young people, as well as of widespread corruption and nepotism.

Tens of thousands of young protesters hit the streets on Tuesday,
torching government buildings
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including the parliament and residences of top politicians, and
forcing Oli to resign. On Friday, President Ramchandra Paudel
dissolved parliament and called for a general election in March
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By then, Nepal’s Gen Z protesters had turned to Discord to decide
who should lead their nation until March. The social media ban was
lifted after the killings earlier in the week.

Virtual polls on mobile screens allowed participants to nominate their
interim leader in real time, marking a radical experiment in digital
democracy.

“People were learning as they went,” said 25-year-old law graduate
Regina Basnet, a protester who had then joined the Discord debate.
“Many of us didn’t know what it meant to dissolve parliament or
form an interim government. But we were asking questions, getting
answers from experts, and trying to figure it out together.”

The discussion revolved around a wide range of issues Nepal must
battle now, including jobs, police and university reforms, as well as
the state of government healthcare, as the moderators urged the
participants to focus on the main question before them: the next
leader.

Five names were shortlisted for the final voting: Harka Sampang, a
social activist and mayor of the eastern city of Dharan; Mahabir Pun,
a popular social activist running the National Innovation Centre;
Sagar Dhakal, an independent politician who ran against the powerful
Nepali Congress leader, Sher Bahadur Deuba, in 2022; advocate Rastra
Bimochan Timalsina, also known as Random Nepali on his YouTube
channel, who has been advising the Gen Z protesters; and Karki.

Karki, who emerged as the winner of the poll, had campaigned for an
independent judiciary during her brief tenure as chief justice from
2016 to 2017. In 2012, she and another Supreme Court judge jailed a
serving minister for corruption. In 2017, the government
unsuccessfully tried to impeach her as chief justice after she
rejected its choice for police chief.

That history added to her credentials in the eyes of the Discord
voters.

“The situation that I have come in, I have not wished to come here.
My name was brought from the streets,” she said in an address to the
nation after assuming office. “We will not stay here more than six
months in any situation. We will complete our responsibilities and
pledge to hand over to the next parliament and ministers.”

Many people who took part in the Discord debate also suggested Balen
Shah, the popular rapper-turned-mayor of Kathmandu, as their choice
for interim prime minister. The Hami Nepal moderators informed the
participants they could not reach Shah, who later posted his
endorsement of Karki on social media.

Many in Nepal believe Shah could be a frontrunner for the prime
minister’s post in the March 5 elections.

‘Much more egalitarian’

Aayush Bashyal, who was part of the Discord discussions, told Al
Jazeera he witnessed a “spectrum of understanding, and it was all
‘trial and error’”.

“Some people would come and belittle the ideas, which would paralyse
the conversation. However, it was absolutely the need of the moment,
and was an impromptu common ground to bring as many voices as
possible,” he said.

Bashyal said some in the Discord forum also called for a restoration
of Nepal’s monarchy, which was abolished in 2006 after a decade-long
rebellion by left-wing forces in the country.

“There was also a pro-monarchy Discord group going on side by side.
Sometimes, people would share the screenshots from their chats,” the
27-year-old student of public administration at Kathmandu’s
Tribhuvan University told Al Jazeera. He branded the pro-monarchy
group as “infiltrators”.

In the same forum, some Gen Z participants even questioned the
legitimacy of the protest leaders. “You made the agenda, but we
don’t know you. How we can trust you is also another issue,” one
participant said.

Other issues that came up during the deliberations included
investigating the killings of protesters and cracking down on
corruption.

[Nepal]

The Supreme Court building burns after being torched by the protesters
in Kathmandu on September 9, 2025 [Samik Kharel/Al Jazeera]

‘This is the future’

Pranaya Rana, a journalist who sends out the popular Kalam Weekly
newsletter to more than 4,300 subscribers, said that using Discord
made sense for a Gen Z-led movement, but that it also came with
challenges.

“It is much more egalitarian than a physical forum that many might
not have access to. Since it is virtual and anonymous, people can also
say what they want to without fear of retaliation,” he told Al
Jazeera.

“But there are also challenges, in that anyone could easily
manipulate users by infiltration, and using multiple accounts to sway
opinions and votes.”

Aware of how misinformation, fake news and rumours could derail such
movements, the Gen Z leaders also launched a sub-room called “fact
checks” on their Discord discussion page.

Among the things they debunked was a photo showing protest leader
Sudan Gurung, the chief negotiator for the formation of the interim
government, with Arzu Rana Deuba, the ousted foreign minister. The
picture was falsely claimed to have been taken a week before, when it
was actually from an event that had happened six months earlier.
Gurung had met the minister to demand justice for a Nepali student who
had died by suicide after he was allegedly harassed at an engineering
college in neighbouring India’s Odisha state.

There were also rumours that Gurung was not a Nepali citizen, but from
Darjeeling, a hill town in eastern India. A copy of his Nepali
citizenship card was released in the Discord discussion room and on
social media.

[Nepal]

Smoke rises from a government building set on fire in Kathmandu [Samik
Kharel/Al Jazeera]

The Gen Z organisers also debunked claims that former King Gyanendra
had met the protesters. It was found that an old video of Nepal’s
last monarch interacting with youngsters was being shared on social
media.

It was also discovered that multiple social media handles and profiles
claiming to be the “official” youth movement had contributed to
some confusion on the ground. On Thursday night, a Gen Z leader was
even seen calling a Nepal military officer on the phone, warning him
against potential royal interference in the formation of the next
government.

Rana, the journalist, said the protest leaders made good use of
technology, “something that Gen Z is best at”.

“This is the future. We can either remain in the days of giving
speeches on stages with mics or get used to talking freely on online
platforms,” he told Al Jazeera.

“Gen Z is naive, but that’s to be expected. They are young, but
they have shown a willingness to learn, and that’s the important
part.”

Anticorruption activist and the former president of Transparency
International Nepal, Padmini Pradhanang, urged Gen Z protest leaders
to work on what the previous governments “miserably failed at –
integrity, accountability, transparency and good governance”.

But law graduate Basnet is not sure.

“At first, it was a peaceful protest. The mood was celebratory. But
the state-ordered carnage later was traumatising… The uprising and
burning of private and public properties was scary, and then, with
people participating in a discussion on social media to form the
government has only added to the confusion,” she told Al Jazeera.

“All these events that unfolded worry me.”

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* Nepal; Gen Z; Discord Platform; Hami Nepal;
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