After BP's death in 1982, Sushil was intractably aligned with GP Koirala, who dominated Nepali politics as a four-term prime minister intermittently between 1991 and 2010. Sushil stood out for largely giving up worldly trappings, including a conjugal life and private property, for a cause larger than himself. Despite several opportunities to serve as a senior minister with portfolio of his choosing, he refused to join government for two decades, choosing instead the lackluster slog of strengthening party's position in the grassroots.
Sushil Koirala did have differences with his cousin GP Koirala, especially in the manner the Maoist conflict was being wound down, but remained an undisputed heir of the establishment wing of the Nepali Congress. It is in managing family-driven factional politics that he often fell short in asserting inclusive leadership. Ensnared in feelings of duty toward loyalists, he erred and lapsed in judgment at times. His harshest critics after the mid-1990s accused him of being conspiratorial and perennially suspicious while well-wishers saw him as devoted to jealously guarding the gains from the Nepali Congress' long struggle for democracy between 1947 and 1990. Much of Sushil's distrust of contemporary leaders was born out of a deeply held belief that no one else could be a stronger bulwark against autocracy. BP's legacy was his charge to keep.
Sushil probably was at his best as a loyal senior aide to top leaders like BP and GP Koirala than being the chief executive himself, except when his non-abrasive personality was suited to forging consensus and calming giant egos to promulgate the republican Constitution of Nepal 2015 after seven years of stalemate. This will possibly be an enduring legacy of his, bolstered serendipitously this week by the end of the 20-week blockade along the Nepal-India border, partly a result of two constitutional amendments he championed.
As prime minister between February 2014 and October 2015, Sushil Koirala compensated for his executive inexperience with seasoned colleagues in a lean cabinet. The abrupt spat with India aside, his team steered a few foreign policy achievements, signed transformative energy deals, and managed the early phase of post-earthquake recovery well. Aided by a chief secretary with an impeccable reputation for probity, Koirala was personally terrified of being sullied by allegations of graft. Until his death, he kept his reputation intact for being clean and simple.
Sushil Koirala will be remembered as a decent man who meant well, had good intentions, but did not quite get a grip of the managerial knack needed to make a dent in the complex systems of organizational malfunction - inside both the Nepali Congress and the Government of Nepal -- in ways that befitted his otherwise exemplary devotion to public service.
Wagle served as a Member of the National Planning Commission (2014-2015), chaired by Sushil Koirala.
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