This provides an opportunity for those in the Bhutanese legal system and the country to learn from experiences of nations within the region.

Besides, the country, because of the way it is situated, has always been in the best of positions to learn from its neighbouring nations and, in fact, it has and it always will.

Coming to law, one of the criticisms the country draws often from people within is that there are one too many of them.

The first democratically elected government, in its five-year tenure alone passed more than 30 laws, and how they are implemented is yet to be seen.

The bigger criticism is that they are often lobbed aside in some shelf gathering dust, in that most laws Parliament passed are rarely implemented.

For instance, the Tenancy Act, a legislation that was enacted much before the first democratically elected government was ushered in, continues to be one such law.

For whatever reasons, landlord and tenants continue to blatantly violate the provisions of the Act.

From that emanates the other criticism that anyone can get away, even after having flouted a law.

Legislators are supposed to draft laws and enact them, the executive will implement them, and the judiciary interprets them.

The problem with the three arms of the government is that there is no real segregation among them.

People, who make up the executive, are the very core members of the Parliament.

The judiciary cannot or rather refrains from intervening unless it is moved, in that an individual has to begin a court case, and the judiciary steps in through the judgments it passes.

People often point out that laws often fall short of implementation, because it is normally the very people in the executive whose relatives, or family members are caught on the wrong side.

Laws can bend in the case of those on the top strata of the society, or they can break it.

The same, however, cannot be said about average Bhutanese.

These issues are but the mere tip of the massive iceberg that remains submerged.

If the country ought really to gain from international experiences, it would have by now.

We still wonder how, despite having many experiences to learn from, to borrow the best practices, a small nation of nearly 700,000 people still cannot realise that dream.

Perhaps it may not happen in this generation or the next, or ever, because it means changing a culture, and change it must, but by then new challenges would have emerged.

The whole thing is a process, not some destination that one generation of people will reach, and the rest that follows basks together in it.

The wheel, it is feared, has to be reinvented with each passing generation.

While the GNH paradigm provides a broad and long term guiding vision of future direction at an individual and national level, change is occurring at all levels.

Take, for example, the head of the family social structure.  In an increasingly money-based economy, where currency does all the talking, a younger member of a family, who brings in the cash and the goodies, is probably more looked up to than the grand old man of the house.

Like the way today’s literate parents relate to their children, or students relate to their teachers, has undergone some fundamental changes, because the environment in which these players live is no longer what it used to be.

Perhaps the most significant change in recent years has been the transition to a new political system, an evolution the country is still learning about and coming to terms with.

With political parties and elected leaders forming the government, a ministerial berth is no longer an appointment like it used to be, even if one is excellent at what one does; one has to have the trust and confidence of the people first to get elected, and then chosen by the party to head a ministry.

But one institution, at least to some observers, that does not seem to be keeping up with the times is the civil service, the bureaucracy that remains and does all the government work, while political leaders come and go.

This is not to say that no reforms have been brought about to the civil service.  In the past decade, several changes were effected, like the position classification system, and allowing open competition for senior level vacant positions.

Yet the danger always looming above the bureaucracy is its well-trained and experienced human resource leaving for greener pastures.

In recent years, such a movement from the middle level, the set poised to lead the bureaucracy, has been found leaving the civil service that even today is the preferred choice among job seekers, because of the perks and job security.

Some left because the extra years spent at university pursuing specialised education meant they became juniors in the civil service hierarchy.

If bureaucrats with skills are leaving, then the civil service must look at ways to attract people with the required skills to join them like on a contract.

The civil service as of today exists as a closed circuit. One examination determines who gets in, and openings are open only to those within the service, whether they have the required skills or not.

If the civil service must have the right people with the right skills, it requires some innovative thinking. Nowadays Bhutanese with skills exist beyond the civil service circuit.

Evaluators sitting on tender committees probably turn a blind eye to such shortcomings, and pass the documents anyway.

Recently, the Construction Development Board issued a notification, following complaints from the Anti-Corruption Commission, disallowing engineers and architects, including surveyors, working with various organisations, from giving away their CVs to Bhutanese contractors.

It is not so much giving, but Bhutanese engineers and architects rather sell copies of their CVs and certificates to the contractors at costs ranging from Nu 10,000 to Nu 100,000, depending on the nature and size of projects.

Similar notifications from the government were issued even in the past, it is being issued today and it will continue to be so until a time when the country has the required number of engineers.

Now that possibility sounds as distant as some political party candidates promising voters a four-lane highway connecting the entire country, when even, forget blacktopping, clearing a farm road to the villages continues to pose the country a major challenge.

Authorities citing engineer’s code of conduct and ethics to remind they cannot accept professional employment outside of their regular work or interest without their employer’s knowledge sounds as tawdry as the jewellers along open streets.

As always, many within the Bhutanese bureaucracy take pretentious pleasure in expounding the ethics and codes of conduct that govern them when they very well know how hollow they sound in the face of reality.

The reality is, the country has just too few engineers and architects and other such professionals, who do not receive salaries commensurate with their line of work and the dearth of them.

Besides, they are not challenged enough to engage their skills and expertise.

Taking work outside of their office is a way both engineers and architects make up for what the system denies them, additional income and space to grow creative and innovative.

The recent notification, while, on the one hand, encourages established contractors and attested ones to play in the market, the rest would hit the chopping board, depriving them of the opportunities the country is only beginning to open to.

Should that happen, we would live to experience the traditional Bhutanese axiom of seeing the rain all falling on one water tank.

Although intentions are noble and morally splendid, before issuing notices reinforcing rules that really do not blend well with existing realities, should authorities not also consider solutions along with them?

Now would that not be a challenge and some real work?

On that day, only two parties, the ones with the highest votes, will move ahead to contest the general round in the second week of July.

This is excluding the 48-hour blackout period before poll day, May 31, where political parties are not supposed to campaign, and the media is not supposed to write stories that might influence voters.

Some voters in Thimphu, who saw the election commission’s schedule, which mentioned the blackout period, were heard discussing that there may not be lights before the primary round poll day.

But that aside, the campaign period coming to an end may be a good thing for both the parties and the electorate.

What the media, both print and audiovisual, has covered is only a fraction of what has been taking place all across the country through the common forums and door-to-door campaigns.

There are signs that the electorate may already be getting tired, what with the farming season already in.  Neither is it a case of the parties having anything new to say to the electorate.  Yesterday, no one showed up to attend one of the common forums for south Thimphu

The pitch so far has been about where the previous ruling party screwed up, and what the new party will do if elected and given the chance to govern.  The previous ruling party has been doing a great deal of justifying what it did, talking about what it achieved, and what it plans to do.

In many areas, the pledges made by the parties overlap, perhaps because they are in line with the draft 11th plan document that is yet to be finalised.

But in other areas, quite a few find some pledges are way over the top, yet it just might be the thing the electorate wants to hear.

Still, the good thing about the campaign is that it brings a sharp focus to issues the country is grappling with, and numerous ways to address them although at this stage they merely sound as words.  This invariably leads to discussions on the political parties, their make up and the pledges being dangled before the electorate.

While the atmosphere is reportedly getting tense among party workers on the ground, at least about 10 percent of electorate have cast their ballot and chosen their party through the postal ballot.

Some are going for the party they can relate to, some are going for the  promises, some want to give someone else a chance and some are going for the party they believe is the best option as of now.

The rest of the family members survived.

Alas, the same could not be said for a family of four in Samtse, where a dish of wild mushrooms claimed the lives of an entire family.

The last the country recorded of a similar incident where consumption of wild mushroom wiped out an entire family was back in 1995.

What makes these tales tragic is that the families were inspirited by the very best intentions, to together pick and prepare a special meal the whole family could relish.

At the turn of seasons, residents across the country look forward to trying out their favourite recipes with the new vegetables, wild ones included.

However, these incidents have been eclipsed by the ongoing political developments across the country.

What is dismaying about these incidents is that people closest to nature, and supposedly the most adept at telling the edible in the wild from the not, have succumbed to such a fate.

The message this sends is that, when it comes to mushrooms, even the most experienced gatherers are sometimes poisoned by toxic species, despite their awareness of the risk involved.

All those old wives’ tales about how edible mushrooms are sometimes rendered toxic because snakes spit their venoms on them, that adding Bhutanese pepper to the fungi before cooking them cleanses them of the poison, or they should be boiled before consuming, are just as doubtful as telling the differences between an edible and inedible mushrooms.

Mushrooms, poisonous ones included, villagers know run the gamut of shapes, colours and sizes.

They also know quite well that mushroom poisoning, quite often occurs when those picking them in the villages or in the woods mistakenly identify inedible species from the edible ones.

Unfortunately, there is no telling the right from the wrong species until it is consumed.

Experts in some of the most developed nations, where similar cases are also reported, say there is no one outward characteristic that all poisonous mushrooms have in common.

All they can do is caution that even after a wild mushroom is positively identified as edible, it should first be tested tasting a tiny bit, and waiting for at least 24 hours.

Therefore, for the time being, it would be safe to say that it is only safe to eat mushrooms that are available in the shops.

If it is really the wild and fresh ones we seek, the wait is not far when villagers will emerge along the roadsides, bringing with them the familiar species that we all know are good to consume.

Some of the promises are blacking topping thousands of kilometres of dirt roads to make them all weather, a power tiller in every chiwog, banking, fuel depots and workshop in each of the 205 gewogs, a new ministry for gender and social development.

Purchase of two helicopters for emergency services, hiking travel and daily allowance for civil servants, travel fare discounts for senior citizens, making pension benefits for the armed and security personnel at par with the civil service, and jobs for every unemployed youth are some of the other promises.

It is clear that every section of the electorate is being wooed, from youth to senior citizens, because the basic question on a voter’s mind is what’s in it for me?  If minors were also allowed to vote, one can imagine what might be on offer.  But that is how the game is usually played and, if too much has been said that can’t be delivered, it’s the boot the next time round.

It is likely that quite a few of the promises might already be in the draft 11th plan, like the black topping of farm roads and three medical doctors in every dzongkhag (this one sounds like a spillover).  There are other aspects in the draft plan like establishing a separate energy ministry, but this one is a difficult sell to garner votes.

All these pledges come at a time, when one repeated campaign issue has been the amount of debt the previous government has piled up, together with the rupee shortage issue and the restrictions on loans.

So what is going to be the source of revenue to get some of the promises off the ground?  When it comes to raising travel and daily allowances, pension benefits, discount for senior citizens and dole for the unemployed to feel employed, these funds would have to come from the recurrent budget.  Which means donor money that might no longer be as substantial as before cannot be used for this.

Several parties have mentioned raising the personal income tax slab, and increasing refunds on educational expenses.  This would take away the some of the revenue already being earned.

The other common pledge is to double the number of tourists to 200,000 in the next five years.  This sector probably carries the hope of not only bringing in government revenue, but also providing the job opportunities everyone is promising.

Vegetable import substitution is the other plan, but it might take the next five years to replace imports that are worth around Nu 300M annually.

So where are funds going to come from?  The only option is through fees and levies, like domestic electricity rates, that are up for revision, and increasing taxes.  No one is talking about these things though.

Political party presidents and candidates have been accusing one another of giving rural voters money, along with their pamphlets, to attend campaign meetings or for attending them.

Some party candidates have been accused of distributing gadgets like mobile phones, while a few others have been providing meals, including alcoholic drinks, to people attending their meetings.

While a few political party candidates claimed to have paid not the electorate but their party workers for their travel allowances, others said they also distributed mobile phones to party workers, because they had to keep in touch.

Giving food to the electorate, party people said, was necessary for people, who walked long distances to hear candidates speak about what they had to offer them, should they be showered with their votes.

Feeding the electorate gathered to listen to party candidates does not sound all that bad for the same reasons of feeling for the other.

Things get a little dirty when parties begin involving money.

If the allegations against some of the political parties prove true, then we are already sowing seeds to ape the sort of practices politics involves in neighbouring nations, and the one we all express outrage at the mere sight or information of which.

We might as well quash the cherished dream and hope of fostering a democracy, quite unlike those in other parts of the world.

The practices we indulge in today are signs of where we are headed, and we all know we do not want to head that way, but we are giving into the temptations of it all.

Perhaps this was one of the reasons why the country’s electoral law requires political parties submit accounts of the money they have and how they spend and on what.

But people, particularly political parties, always find a way around these laws.  For instance, some parties have been accused of receiving money from outside the country, paying their candidates and those of the others to swing them on to their side.

Settling for any means to win an election will no doubt produce a prime minister and a government, but it will be in a country that would, in future, have turned cynical about the whole process.

What legacy are we leaving behind, if we allow that to happen?

It does not have to be like this.

Campaigns should be carried out based on, what we always believe in, informing the electorate of the parties that have a sustainable long-term vision and plans for the country’s future and, over all, which of them bears the public’s interest.

The discussion has emanated, especially in the light of the competition parties are undergoing in efforts to shore up support for the primary round of election, which is just over a week away.

While there was no qualms about “extending courtesy” to political party presidents, when they visited various parts of the country, the guidelines seemed like they would prejudice one over the other, when its terms grew more specific.

The guidelines that were drawn up for compliance by dzongkhag, drungkhag and gewog administrations during the National Assembly elections required former prime minister to be treated slightly different from the other presidents in the race.

It mandated the dzongda, along with the dzongrab and other such senior officials that were supposed to receive the former prime minister and president of Druk Phuensum tshogpa at the place he would reside in and offer him welcome tea.

Other political party presidents, the guideline said, would have the dzongrab lead other senior officials, not receive them, but go to their place of residence on arrival and offer tea.

The treatment the guideline stipulates would apply when party presidents visited dungkhags and gewogs.

Now that is where the guidelines sound off discriminatory vibes.

It sounded like the ministry was trying to ingratiate itself with the former prime minister, or felt the dzongkhag and other local authorities owed fealty to the former lyonchhoen.

In a democracy, all the different political parties are there basically to give people what the former prime minister’s party stands for, a choice.

It may not sound like such differential treatments would disrupt, what election commission calls, a level playing field, but in rural areas it does.

In remote areas, people still identify with personalities, which is why the election commission’s requirement that all candidates shear off their ceremonial coloured scarves and swords.

Add to that the head of a dzongkhag receiving one party president, and making do with a subordinate to see other party presidents.

That could, to an extent, also determine the number of people political party presidents would draw.

In rural areas, people still identify with personalities.

While it certainly feels warm to be received with a cup of tea after a long tiring journey along the country’s long winding journeys and trudging the hostile terrains, such arrangements should be left to party coordinators and workers.

Dzongkhag authorities could facilitate.

Even for the political party presidents and candidates at this point of time, while such gestures do matter, it is more the people they can mobilise to attend their talks.

That in itself is welcome enough a gesture.

The royal civil service commission, after sitting on it for at least a day, and meeting twice, decided that the two teachers would be made to resign compulsorily for joining politics before their resignations were accepted.

That is what the two teachers wanted in any case – to resign.

There was some concern that they might not get their retirement benefits, but the commission has made it clear they will get it, which is even better.

And since they have not been terminated, it means they can continue a life of party politics, or become apolitical and contest for a seat in the council in 2018. For the parties, they get to keep their candidate.

They are not the only civil servants, who have been compulsorily made to resign.  There was a similar case in the run up to the 2008 elections, when a civil servant joined a party before resigning.  That civil servant is now a candidate with one of the parties.

There are other cases of people, who were at one time in the past also asked to resign compulsorily for mucking up, and are now politicians.

All this has been possible because they were not terminated from service.  The Constitution says that anyone terminated from service cannot take part in the council or assembly elections.

This should come as a relief for some people, because there was concern on how the relevant authorities might react.

But others were of the view that nothing much would come out of it.  With campaigns for the primary round already started, there was no way another two parties would be disqualified, because if they were, there would be no need for a primary round with only two parties left.

While a back and forth has been going on between the civil service commission and election commission on who is responsible for the slip, the election commission has maintained that the scrutiny of candidates will only happen before the general election; for the primary round, all they wanted was a list of the names of 47 candidates from each party with their attested certificates.

Yet, the fact that one party got disqualified for not giving in a list of 47 names, when there are other parties still finalising and making changes to the list, has not gone down well with a section of the electorate.  To them, the process is not only flawed, it is downright unfair.

But the process is on and cannot move backwards.  The only thing left now is for candidates to show up at their respective constituencies and make themselves and their party visible.  There are reports that, in some constituencies, some parties have no candidates to show.

The two teachers in the eye of the storm should do that.

Political party presidents and candidates are claiming to be from humble family backgrounds, and how they were best placed to reach out their hands, should they be elected to govern the country, into the darkness and pull the hands of those like them into the light.

Mere gimmicks to sell their pledges to buy votes, or not, only time will tell.

But for the time being, a small initiative by a handful of teachers showed that was indeed possible if people really dared, or truly felt the discomforts of the other less fortunate ones.

The move to mobilise what little contributions to cover the otherwise cold, decrepit cement floors of Zilnon Namgyelling primary school for students, whom most parents would love to seat or lay them on most squashy of cushions, was a small demonstration of that.

We often talk about Gross National Happiness (GNH) and making it instrumental in people’s everyday lives.

This is the guiding philosophy that political parties have their manifestoes and ideologies revolve around.

Alas, we are so immersed about breathing GNH into the lives of people, and trying to concoct one fanciful embroidery of the concept to another, that we often forget to begin small.

In other words, we often forget the small daily differences we can make, which in time can balloon into big ones, because we are trying to think about how we can make big ones at once.

As is the case with the country’s philosophy that normally has more experts and researchers outside the country than we have inside, it normally takes a visitor from outside to show how little initiatives could add up to something big.

This goes to show that, while we try to ape what other nations have long been through and subsequently rued the path they took, it is often these visitors to the country, who have to point out just how special the country is, especially in terms of its communal bond.

This is another aspect the political parties and their workers ought to be mindful of.

In their attempts to reach out to the electorate better than the other, it should not be at the cost of discrediting one party or the other.

Drawing on their manifestoes and ideologies and convincing the electorate through the programs they have slated for the country and its people, it is believed, should be the basis for their campaigns.