“Rajtantra na prajatantra, sangbidhangata na asangbidhangata” (‘Monarchy or republican, within or without the constitution’): these are the two biggest dilemmas facing Nepal’s youthful leaders days after forcing veteran Communist leader and prime minister K.P. Sharma Oli out of power.Despite an eerie calm on the streets of Kathmandu, tension between various factions among young and not-so-young leaders, who had taken to the streets earlier this week to force out Oli’s coalition government, on what form the new government will take is turning the Nepal army’s attempt at forging a national unity cabinet into a virtual nightmare.Some ten to 12 groups met repeatedly with the army chief Ashok Raj Sigdel, each claiming to represent the ‘Gen Z’ youth. Some did not want royalists who too had taken to the streets seeking to overthrow the Oli government in the coalition within the new cabinet, others wanted to bring in communist students, yet others did not want any with political affiliations.“Obviously, all of them cannot be genuine student leaders or for that matter representative of those who stormed Singha Durbar [the palace complex in the heart of Kathmandu],” said Kuber Chalise, Consulting Editor, Nepal Khabar.The students haven’t been able to agree or see eye-to-eye on the formation of the new government, though many support Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, and Nepal’s first woman to head its Supreme Court, for the job of interim prime minister.But even that may well change as discussions and negotiations continue.At the heart of the unrest lies growing frustration among young people over the government’s repeated failures in creating jobs, improving the state of the economy and in curbing widespread corruption.Chalise pointed out: “The previous administration simply could not deliver. A revolt was simmering for a long time and was bound to happen.”Students and angry youth contrasted their lifestyle to that of privileged children of the elite, giving birth to a derogatory term – “Nepo Kids” – long before they took to the streets.The looting which followed the revolt saw not only politicians being attacked and humiliated publicly, but also supermarkets, factories, showrooms for upmarket cars and the houses of the super-rich being looted and burnt down.The movement fed by social media had its beginnings in civil rights movements that had been protesting the widespread corruption in the country – from contracts to jobs to human trafficking.Many Gen Z protesters rally around Balen Shah, Kathmandu’s mayor who has called for the dissolution of parliament, and hope to form a government minus the major political parties such as the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), the Nepal Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist Centre.Obviously, young leaders from these existing political parties including those heading their student wings aren’t very enamoured with the idea and went on a show of strength on Thursday in various parts of the country to press for a “constitutional solution to the current impasse”.Dilip Bhattarai, a young CPN-UML leader involved in organising the counter-protests, said they had been actively gathering their cadres in what is being seen by analysts as a pushback against the sudden storm unleashed by hitherto unknown youth factions.Politicians like Bhattarai see the current “so-called apolitical movement” as an attempt by foreign “Western” powers to foist an unelected government on Nepal. They are also deeply suspicious of the role of the army.“The army appears to be moving towards restoring the monarchy. We oppose this strongly … nothing should be done outside the Constitution. Only elected representatives have the right to change the character or course of Nepal’s history … we are also against Oli … he made too many mistakes,” said Bhattarai.His concern on attempts to bring back the monarchy stems from the recent public appearance of the army chief on live television alongside a portrait of Nepal’s 18th century king Prithvi Narain Shah, widely credited for unifying the country.Many including Bhattarai view this as a “dangerous signal of potential anti-democratic intentions”.Chalise warned that the protest has already been hijacked by disparate political “opportunists” including the right-wing Rastriya Swatantra Party, a pro-royalist party, and ultra-Left Maoists.“Maoist cadres were heavily involved, especially in the violent episodes,” he alleged.However, it is possible that not all attacks were driven by ideology or the desire to loot the rich. Some, he said, may have been driven by personal rivalries, such as the targeting of the Central Bank governor Biswa Nath Poudel’s residence and the offices of a popular media house – Kantipur Publications.This spate of violence, he said, has alarmed ordinary citizens. “What people don’t want is that Nepal should not turn into another Ukraine, where global powers play around, nor an Ethiopia, where recurrent civil conflicts stem any development effort.”The angst against the old order has seen most of Nepal’s political leaders being placed under protective custody by the army in various military barracks.The only exception appears to be Prachanda, or Pushpa Kamal Dahal, whose whereabouts remain unknown. “He could well turn out to be the wild card in this high-stakes political drama,” Chalise remarked.Bhattarai however, pointed out that the absence from public life of the nation’s political class has left a vacuum, contributing to a sense of crisis and called for including the major parties in government formation.“We have seen a flash of street power, but does this mean that all those who believed in a certain ideology have disappeared? No.”How the Nepalese army, which has involved itself in politics and government formation for the first time in the country’s history, manages these contradictions over ideology and constitutionality is yet to be seen.But nevertheless, because it has now managed to control Nepal’s streets, forcing violent protestors to retreat and even disappear for the time being, its voice and decisions may well prove to be the ones that cast longer shadows than any others, in tomorrow’s Nepal.Jayanta Roy Chowdhury is a senior journalist.