Balendra set to become Nepal's new prime minister

KATHMANDU, Feb 09 (Al Jazeera): Nepal's centrist Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) of 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah has secured a majority in the direct parliamentary elections and is heading for a landslide, according to official results and trends.
Balendra Shah is set to become Nepal's new prime minister. The results declared early Sunday were the country's first election since last year's youth-led uprising which toppled the government.
Elections on Thursday chose a new 275-member House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, with 165 seats chosen directly, and 110 by a proportional representation vote.
Shah's RSP has already won at least 117 of 153 direct seats and is leading in eight other constituencies in results published by Nepal's Election Commission.
Shah, widely known simply as "Balen", himself on Saturday defeated the veteran four-time Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Sharma Oli - whose Marxist-led government was ousted in the protests last year - in his own seat in a southeastern district, securing almost four times as many votes as Oli.
Shah's victory over the 74-year-old Oli, and his rise from the capital Kathmandu's mayor to potential prime minister, marks one of the most dramatic results in recent Nepali politics.
The Nepali Congress, the largest party in the past coalition government, won 17 seats, though its new leader, Gagan Thapa, was defeated by an RSP candidate.
Oli's Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) was trailing with seven wins. Former Maoist commander Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a three-time prime minister, won his seat.