KATHMANDU, Dec 4: CPN-UML Vice-Chair Surendra Prasad Pandey has expressed concern that the personalities of individual leaders are increasingly overshadowing institutional processes within the party.
Speaking on Nagarik Frontline on Wednesday, leader Pandey said the growing dominance of individual leaders posed a threat to the party’s identity and internal democracy.
Shyam Bahadur Pandey, founder of Hotel Shangri-La, passes away
Recalling UML’s organizational history, he said the party once prioritized collective leadership. “During the Marxist Leninist (M-L) era, we never highlighted who the leader was. The belief then was that when a leader’s personality becomes too big, it begins to crush the party’s institutional identity,” he said. “Today, we are facing the same problem. Leaders have been elevated to such an extent that the party’s organizational persona is fading.”
Pandey criticized the emerging culture of “whatever the leader says is final,” calling it harmful to democratic practice.
“We trained cadres to believe that the leader is everything and whatever he says is unquestionable,” he said. “This trend distanced the party from the people. It also eroded our capacity for self-assessment. One reason we failed to sense the warning sign of the Gen-Z protest on September 8 was this very mindset.”
With the general convention approaching and debates over leadership transfer heating up, Pandey emphasized that merely changing faces will not fix the issue unless the underlying tendencies change.
“Since the eighth general convention, intra-party competition has focused only on securing positions, not on strengthening institutional procedures,” he said. “The UML must now become a policy-driven entity and guided by collective decision-making rather than leader-centric politics. Otherwise, no matter how many conventions we hold, we will not regain public trust.”
