Nepal: From Monarchy to Republic

Politics under the new regime was totally different from that of the pre-coup period. First, parties were outlawed and opposition voices were suppressed and new political course was still unclear. A few days later, King Mahendra dropped a hint at an alternative system, which would look like a kind of basic democracy of Pakistani variety and an alternative to parliamentary system. The King said that "since panchayats are the basis of democracy and a democratic system imposed from above has proved unsuitable, as is apparent from the present experience of the country, we have now to build democracy gradually layer by layer from the bottom upwards","