Nancy Pearcey
@NancyRPearcey
Why the government in Nepal fell -- the role played by USAID:
"Investigative reporting revealed that USAID had secretly funneled $33 million into federalism projects through irregular agreements signed by the Finance Ministry without constitutional approval. USAID’s chosen partner was the Niti Foundation, an NGO seeded with money from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations. Niti operatives, presented as “consultants,” were embedded in government offices, quietly shaping policy with foreign influence. Officials who should have resisted these intrusions were compromised by conflicts of interest, as in the case of Balananda Poudel, who both chaired a constitutional commission and had ties to Niti.
When whistleblowers revealed these entanglements, the government tried to deny everything. The Ministry of Finance claimed no USAID money had gone to federalism. That lie was exposed by its own officials, who showed that hundreds of municipalities had already received US-funded support. Documents surfaced proving the secret agreements, the involvement of Deloitte as contractor, and the bypassing of Nepal’s constitutional bodies. The scandal was devastating. To young Nepalis, it confirmed what the “Nepo Kids” images dramatized: their leaders were liars who treated the nation as spoils for themselves and their foreign patrons.
The ruling coalition led by Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli presented itself as Marxist-Leninist, committed to equality. In practice, it was a corrupt patronage machine. This is why the uprising was not merely a flash in the pan. It was the reaction of a generation that had been told socialism would bring justice, only to watch foreign aid turn into a vehicle for nepotism. The “people’s government” became the face of hypocrisy, living in palaces, silencing dissent, and taking secret checks from abroad."
--@amuse
11:24 AM · Sep 10, 2025
