CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli, who appears set to return to power after ensuring a landslide win for the left alliance of his party and the CPN (Maoist Centre), said on Monday that he would duly respect the opposition and take it along.

The left alliance has completed a clean sweep in the House of Representatives and Provincial Assembly (PA) elections bagging 110 seats (76 for the UML and 34 for the Maoist Centre) out of 165 seats under the first-past-the-post category. Oli’s UML is also leading the vote count under the proportional representation (PR) category through which 110 members will be elected to the HoR.

“We have seen in the past… victory often tends to make parties arrogant. There are apprehensions that the state will become oppressive…winners tend to become indifferent to their responsibilities. I would like to assure… we ourselves have gone through such oppressions to arrive where we are today,” Oli said while collecting the certificate of victory at the district election office in Jhapa on Monday. “We know where it hurts.”

Oli won from Jhapa-5 with 57,139 votes, defeating Nepali Congress (NC)’s Khagaraj Adhikari who secured 28,297 votes.

Oli—who is known for making tongue-in-cheek remarks, sometimes quite scathing against his opponents—on Monday appeared calm and composed, just as he chose his words carefully.

Oli said the new government would take the opposition along and work with it, giving it the due respect.

The governing NC, which has faced its biggest electoral debacle ever with just 21 seats in its kitty under the FPTP system, is set to sit in opposition when a new government under the Oli-led left alliance takes shape in Kathmandu.

The left alliance, which made “prosperity through stability” its rallying cry during its election campaigns, also appears set to form provincial governments in six out of seven provinces.

“Majority only does not mean stability. But again, ensuring development, prosperity and stability is not that difficult if the leadership has willpower,” said Oli.

The elections, held in two phases on November 26 and December 7, capped the country’s 11-year transition from monarchy to federal democracy.  Majority votes for the left alliance are also expected to install a government at the centre for a full five-year term, bringing an end to the game of musical chairs in the country which has seen 26 governments since the restoration of multi-party democracy in 1990. The UML chairman who landed at Bhadrapur Airport at 11:30 in the morning had a hectic schedule the whole day on Monday. Until evening, he had addressed seven victory rallies in Jhapa. Of the five constituencies in Jhapa, the left alliance has claimed four, with Constituency 3 going to Rajendra Prasad Lingden of the Rastriya Prajatantra Party, who defeated NC’s Krishna Prasad Sitaula in one of the major upsets for the Congress party.  The left alliance’s role was crucial in ensuring Lingden’s victory in the constituency as it had forged an electoral alliance with the RPP in the constituency and had not fielded any candidate against him.

Stating that an electoral alliance with the RPP was a compulsion [of the left alliance], Oli also thanked the people of Jhapa for approving what he called an unlikely alliance.