Sawt Falasteen - Nepal's 'courageous' new PM known for integrity

Karki, who took the oath of office late Friday from President Ram Chandra Paudel, will lead the political transition in the Himalayan nation after deadly anti-corruption protests.

The 73-year-old emerged as the leading candidate of many representatives of "Gen Z" -- the loose umbrella title of the protest movement -- who selected her via online platform Discord.

She told Nepali media that the Gen Z protesters had told her that "they believe in me" to lead for "a short time for the purpose of doing elections".

"She is a credible choice to lead the interim government," Anil Kumar Sinha, a former justice of the Supreme Court who worked with Karki, told AFP.

"Her integrity has never been in doubt, and she is not someone who can be intimidated or easily influenced. She is courageous and not swayed by pressure."

- 'In favour of youth' -

In a speech broadcast on Nepali media earlier this year, Karki spoke of ingrained corruption.

"We see it everywhere but we don't speak -- now we need the youth to speak up, take the lead and stand in elections", she said.

"What I have seen in the last 35 years does not work. I am 100 percent in favour of youth coming forward."

Her tenure as chief justice, from 2016 to 2017, was brief but significant -- challenging gender stereotypes and facing down politicians over corruption.

Karki came of age in a society where women rarely entered the legal profession.

Born in 1952 in Biratnagar, an industrial town in eastern Nepal, she earned degrees in political science in India and in law in Kathmandu.

She began her career as a lawyer in 1979, and quickly gained a reputation as a fearless advocate, often taking up cases others avoided.

- Defiant -

In 2012, Karki was one of two presiding Supreme Court judges who jailed a serving government minister for corruption -- a first at the time for Nepal in its battle against a culture of graft.

In 2017, the government tried to impeach her as chief justice after she overturned its choice for chief of police.

The United Nations called the impeachment "politically motivated" and the move was blocked. She stepped down from the post at her retirement.

Nepal emerged from a brutal decade-long Maoist insurgency in 2006 and, in 2008, the end of the country's 240-year-old Hindu monarchy.

The transformation to a federal state was marred by political infighting, and successive governments have dragged their feet on bringing perpetrators of abuses committed during the civil war to justice.

But it was under Karki's watch as chief justice that a court in 2017 sentenced three soldiers to 20 years in jail for the murder of a teenage girl, at the time only the second conviction for crimes committed during the war.

She is Nepal's first woman prime minister, but not its first woman leader -- Bidya Devi Bhandari held the largely ceremonial role of president for two terms from 2015 to 2023.

D.AbuRida--SF-PST