Prior to the presentation of Nepal’s budget, in late May, a favourite topic of speculation in Kathmandu was just how long KP Oli’s prime ministership would last. All the predictions of its end have so far proven false.

When Nepal’s finance minister read out the country’s latest budget on 28 May, he did so under unorthodox circumstances. Where budget presentations usually indicate a degree of stability in government, this one was expected to be a prelude to the exact opposite. Two days earlier, Pushpa Kamal Dahal—the chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist-Centre), the ruling coalition’s main partner—had told reporters that, after the budget was announced, he would become Nepal’s new prime minister. He was to replace KP Oli of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist), which heads that coalition. The handover was supposedly promised under a deal struck earlier that month between the CPN(UML) and the Maoists—which, in Kathmandu’s political circles, was referred to as a “gentlemen’s agreement.”