Sushil Koirala

Sushil Koirala (born August 12, 1939, Biratnagar, Nepal—died February 9, 2016, Kathmandu) was a Nepali politician and government official, who served as the prime minister of Nepal in 2014–15.

Koirala was a member of one of Nepal’s most prominent political families. Three of his relatives—Matrika Prasad Koirala, Bishweshwar Prasad (B.P.) Koirala, and Girija Prasad Koirala—had been high-ranking officials in the Nepali Congress Party (NCP) and had served as prime ministers of Nepal. Sushil became involved in politics while he was still a teenager, joining the NCP in 1954. For the next several years, he worked toward the party’s goal of holding democratic elections in Nepal, the first of which took place in 1959. His cousin B.P. Koirala became prime minister that year, but in December 1960 King Mahendra ousted B.P. in a coup, and Sushil, along with other members of the NCP, went into exile in India.

In the 1960s and ’70s, Koirala became part of a resistance effort against the king’s government. His activities included editing a party periodical in Varanasi, India, and participating in the 1973 hijacking of an airplane en route from Nepal to India, which netted the NCP a considerable amount of cash but also eventually landed Koirala in jail (in India) for several years. He returned to Nepal in 1979 and continued working toward establishing a democratic government, efforts that ultimately resulted in an agreement with the monarchy in 1990 and legislative elections in 1991. Koirala was named a member of the NCP’s Central Working Committee and rose in the party’s hierarchy, becoming its general secretary in 1996 and vice president two years later. In 2008 Girija Prasad Koirala, then president of the NCP, named Sushil the party’s acting president, and after Girija’s death in 2010 Sushil became president.

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On February 10, 2014, Sushil Koirala was elected prime minister of Nepal by the country’s Constituent Assembly (legislature). His assumption to the post came about after the NCP reached an agreement with the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist), or CPN (UML), on the governance of the country. The accord came after weeks of deadlocked discussions between the two parties following November 2013 legislative elections in which the NCP and CPN (UML) had won the largest and second largest number of seats, respectively.

Because Koirala was known for his humble lifestyle, many hoped that his new administration would address what was considered to be widespread government corruption. He soon faced criticism, however, for the government’s poor response to the families of 16 Sherpas killed in an April 2014 avalanche on the slopes of Mount Everest. Complaints were also raised against the Nepali government in the aftermath of a freak snowstorm in the Annapurna region that October that killed dozens of trekkers and stranded hundreds of others.The Koirala administration’s greatest challenge, however, was its response to the massive earthquake that struck Nepal on April 25, 2015, one of the worst catastrophes in the country’s history. The Nepali government mobilized its armed forces and solicited large amounts of foreign aid and assistance in its rescue, recovery, and rebuilding efforts.

In September 2015 Nepal adopted a new constitution, and on October 12 Koirala left office after the legislature elected Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli of the CPN (UML) the new prime minister. Earlier, in mid-2014, Koirala had weathered a personal crisis when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, which was later successfully treated. His health, however, remained fragile, and he died of respiratory failure in early 2016.