Ballendra Shah, a former rapper, is leading Nepal's Rastriya Swatandra Party to a landslide victory in 2026 after Gen Z protests toppled the old political establishment. Shah won Kathmandu's mayoral race in 2022 and now controls over 100 of 165 directly elected seats. TJ Walker argues that media mastery and personal brand have replaced traditional political paths, citing parallels to Trump and Zelensky.
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Nepal's political upheaval. Nepal's political establishment may have just been upended by one of the most unusual candidates in modern politics: a former rapper. Ballendra Shah, once known for his music career, now leads the Rastriya Swatandra Party. Apologies if I botched that pronunciation. That party is headed toward a landslide victory in Nepal's parliamentary election. The party, founded only 4 years ago, has already won more than 100 of the country's 165 directly elected seats and is leading in many others. The surge follows youth-led protests last year that toppled Nepal's long-dominant political leadership amid anger over corruption and economic frustration. Shah first gained national attention when he won the mayoral race in Kathmandu in 2022 as an outsider reformer. Now his movement appears poised to form the next government, marking one of the most dramatic political shifts Nepal has seen in decades. Let's look at some more facts of this, and I'll explain why I think this is significant regardless of whether you live in Nepal or don't, because most of our viewers and listeners do not live in Nepal. Okay, the election was held after the 2025 Gen Z-led protests. We talked about that on the show. There was a huge protest of young people in that country unhappy with government corruption and government policies there. And they had an impact. This party was founded only 4 years ago. He was elected mayor in 2022, and now it looks like he's going to be taking over the entire country. So the government requires a majority of the 138 seats in the parliament. Now, what initially started all this was a social media ban. Political leaders a number of years ago tried to ban all social media. Guess what? Not a popular thing to do if you're a politician among young people. The supporters celebrated with flower garlands and vermilion powder. So here's why I'm putting a spotlight on this issue. I think if you are someone who aspires to hold political power in democracies around the world, you have to take a look at someone like this. Someone like, and I don't hold him up as a role model very often, Donald Trump. Someone like Zelensky in Ukraine. When you look at the backgrounds of these people, Zelensky was a TV comedian. Donald Trump was arguably, you could call him a TV comedian, but a reality TV talk show host was basically his claim to fame. And now we have a former rapper gaining, about to assume power over a nation. What do they all have in common? They did two things. They learned two things. They learned how to communicate effectively through the media, and they attracted people who liked them. They attracted followers. That, I think, is real currency in politics everywhere in the world these days. If you have any kind of aspirations to win votes in anything that is a democracy, or at least still has remnants of a democracy, you got to figure out how to communicate in the media and build a tribe, build followers. Love him or hate him, and there's a good case to be made for both, Trump did that with his many, many years of getting his face on TV, not just as a paid host and producer for shows like The Apprentice, but just buying his way in, buying full-page ads in The New York Times in 1988 to demagogue things like, why certain young innocent Black men should be given the death penalty. Again, I'm not relitigating that. My point is simply Trump is someone who didn't play the traditional game. He didn't get a law degree, start off running for city council, state legislature, House, Senate, governor, and then president. No, he spent his entire career building a media following, honing his communication skills, building fame. Now you can make the case that isn't the best thing for democracy, but that is how increasingly people are gaining power. It happened in Ukraine. Zelensky was a TV comedian. He played a politician part on TV as a comedian. And now we have this situation in Nepal where the next leader is coming from an entertainment background. Now, true, he has served as mayor now, so he does have some political seasoning. But I point this out to you, if you do aspire to leadership in your country, your state, your city, your community, sometimes the best path there is not the traditional linear way of working your way up, precinct manager, city council, mayor, governor, or congressman, governor. Sometimes you have to think about, how can I do something completely different? How can I be interesting? Because the modern social media world values being interesting. You can make the case that maybe that's not the best thing for democracies. Maybe it's not generating our best people taking over power, but that is reality. Am I telling you if you aspire to become the president of your country, you should spend all of your time making demo records and trying to be a rapper? No, but I do want you to at least think about how you can have the other side of you, whether you like singing on the weekends or playing piano as a hobby, or doing sculpture, whatever it is. Think about how you can show other sides of your personality and share it on social media and other places, because you never know, that may ultimately be what gets you elected to office.
