How Democracy is Evolving in Bhutan

The Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan is taking another step on its road to democracy next Monday. It will hold local elections for the first time in most of the country.

This comes just three years after a sweep of democracy was brought in by the then-King, over the protests of a population that preferred for him to continue to rule. Bhutan’s transition from feudal monarchy to democracy is still a work-in-progress.

The weekend market in the town of Paro is a collage of color, of Buddhist monks in berry-colored robes, townsfolk in traditional tunics, and villagers, down from their mountain farms. Sonam, an elderly man with a warm smile, sits cross-legged on the ground, selling rice and apples. He’s a former village chief, and said, in recent years, the government has done a great job of bringing roads, electricity, mobile phones and even satellite television to villages like his.

“Now I can get news from the BBC, and around the world; that is, when my grandchildren aren’t monopolizing the television, watching Cartoon Network,” Sonam said.

Sonam knows the challenges of being a local leader. But not the kind that will be elected next week. He served at the pleasure of the king.

Those elected will be answering to the populations they serve. And if they don’t do what the people want, for the first time in Bhutan’s history, the people will have to power to vote them out.

“They want, they want modern amenities like in the towns, in the cities,” said Kesang, the general manager of the Bhutan Broadcasting Service’s radio division. “They consider themselves as citizens now, not as subjects anymore. Anything the government’s not delivering, they make noise.”

It’s more tricky for rural Bhutanese who have migrated to cities. Under the rules of the local elections, they’re only allowed to vote where they live if they own land there. And because much of Bhutan’s land is owned by an elite few who rarely sell it, less than seven percent of the population in the capital, Thimpu, were allowed to vote in an early round of local elections. The rest of Thimpu’s residents could travel back to their villages and vote there.

But such journeys can take days, and many Bhutanese protest that it’s irrelevant to their lives whose in the local government back in the village. They want a say where they live. If the vote is going to be linked to land ownership, as it also was in the early days of the United States, they want more access to land.

Karma Rangdal, a member of Bhutan’s National Assembly, said that’s one reason they’re considering a new land act.

“There are many, many people who have minimal land holdings. So we have to figure out how to distribute the land equitably, and make sure those rich and powerful people don’t take all the land,” Rangdal said.

That impulse is one sign of Bhutan’s transition from a feudal, hierarchy to a democracy. Another is having an opposition party.

“As inconsistent as it may seem, when the 4th King of Bhutan, he commanded that we were going to have a democracy, most people, all people resisted,” said Tshering Tobgay, the opposition leader. “We didn’t want democracy. I didn’t want democracy. We were suspicious of democracy, and at the same time, we were happily enjoying the golden reign of our king.”

But the King insisted, so Tobgay resigned his civil servant job and became opposition leader. That doesn’t mean he has to like it. He still cringes at the idea of doing ideological battle.

“Here in Bhutan, political parties were not formed because we had an ideological vision. We formed just to take part in the elections. We formed because our Constitution required political parties. So there is no ideological difference between the two parties,” Tobgay said.

And yet, enough suspicion of contentious politics remains that the constitution requires candidates for local government to have been free of any party affiliation for at least a year.

The theory is that a lack of partisanship will free local governments to better serve local needs. Bhutanese will find out – once they elect their local leaders next week – how much that theory holds in practice.