According to several party insiders, Pokhrel, who was acting prime minister in Oli’s absence, had no idea about the teleconference, and had to ask Poudel whether he knew why the prime minister was calling a Cabinet meeting from Singapore. The fact that the acting prime minister had to call on the party general secretary for clarification on Oli’s decision was a telling example of how the prime minister, and Singha Durbar, functions on a daily basis. According to a number of ruling party leaders, parliamentarians and political analysts that the Post spoke to for this story, Oli has surrounded himself with a close circle of advisors and favoured leaders and ministers, on whose advice alone he makes decisions and acts. Outside this inner circle, Oli does not take suggestions, advice or input from anyone else in the government, or the party, they said. “The prime minister does not trust his own ministers,” Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba said at a programme in Kathmandu on Friday. “How can the prime minister run the country if he does not trust his own Cabinet colleagues?” As soon as he was elected, Oli had announced that he would cut down on the number of advisers. He eventually announced four advisers and two officials in his secretariat. However, in the months since, around a dozen Nepal Communist Party leaders and supporters have been working at the Prime Minister’s Office and the Secretariat in Baluwatar, according to officials from the office. Most of them are former UML party members. But even among them, Oli hardly consults anyone, except for Chief Adviser Bishnu Rimal and Foreign Relations Adviser Rajan Bhattarai, party insiders told the Post. Besides these two, Oli takes advice from Rajesh Bajracharya, who is also his close relative. Rimal and Bajracharya are Oli’s closest confidants while Bhattarai and Press Adviser Kundan Aryal consist of the second rung of advisers. On both the government and party fronts, Oli takes advice from Poudel, the party general secretary. When the prime minister holds sensitive meetings with foreign dignitaries, he mostly consults Rimal, Bhattarai and Poudel, an aide who is familiar with meetings in Baluwatar, told the Post.