President Poudel Advocated For Reinstatement of Monarchy? No, Viral Video Is Misleading

Claim
President Ram Chandra Poudel also advocated for reinstatement of monarchy.
Fact
Viral video from 2023 shows Ram Chandra Poudel responding to the media on national unity day.

A video allegedly showing President Ram Chandra Poudel advocating for reinstatement of monarchy is going viral on TikTok.

TikTok user @user1848461282060 posted a video showing Ram Chandra Poudel speaking to journalists. In the video, President Poudel says, “I have been reiterating the need to save the national unity to save the nation. We are also practicing the same. To mark the occasion of the national unity day, we are also celebrating the birthday of late King Prithvi Narayan Shah who unified this country and made us Nepali. We should not limit this national unity day to a formality but we really need to unify the country and build the nation. Today the country is in need of national unity in a real sense. Each and every Nepali people should be united in spirit and deal the common challenges in a collective manner. As King Prithvi Narayan Shah noted  in his Divyopadesh that both who gives and takes bribe are the enemy of the nation, so we need to get rid of the problems of corruption.” When asked if the Nepali Congress will join the government, Poudel says, “Nepali Congress party’s strategy is to work together and take a giant leap of development in the next five years. We will support the government from outside.”

The video posted on January 5 has garnered 7979 likes, 772 users have shared and 438 people have commented until the last count.

The archived version of the TikTok video can be seen here.

Fact Check /Verification

To check the veracity of the claim, Newschecker split the video into several keyframes and ran reverse searches on them. A Google reverse search on a frame led us to a video, dated January 11, 2023, posted on the Facebook page of Lokantar News online. On checking the video, we found that the video exactly matched the viral clip.

Taking a clue from the video, we ran a search on YouTube and found another video, dated Jan 11, 2023, posted on the YouTube channel of eKantipur online.  The video also exactly matched viral video. However, we did not find any statement by President Ram Chandra Poudel regarding the need to reinstate monarchy in Nepal.

Further, we searched and found that Nepali Congress leader Ram Chandra Poudel was elected as the president on March 9, 2023.  Poudel defeated his contender CPN UML candidate Subas Chandra Nembang.

Thus, our findings clearly indicated that the viral video shows an old clip of Poudel speaking on the occasion of national unity day or birthday of late King Prithvi Narayan Shah before his appointment as the president.

Conclusion

No, President Ram Chandra Poudel didn’t advocate for reinstatement of monarchy. The viral video shows old clip of Poudel speaking about the need to eliminate corruption and maintain good governance and strengthen national unity on the occasion of Prithvi Jayanti or the national unity day. Thus, the viral claim that President Poudel has advocated for reinstatement of monarchy is misleading.

Result: Misleading

Sources
Lokantar News/Facebook, Jan 11, 2023
ekantipur/Facebook, Jan 11, 2023
Rising Nepal, March 9, 2023