With just a day to go to elect a new council, predictions on likely winners are the order of the day.
Some are based on how they appeared on the televised debates, and some on the family and relative networks backing them.
In all likelihood, the intervention of the divine would have been sought. Soothsayers would have been consulted.
Two names from across the border pop up every now and then that some Bhutanese consult quite regularly when [... Read More]
It seems like it was only yesterday when Bhutan went to polls and put in place its first democratically elected government and parliament.
Today, members of the National Assembly are holding a function at the Gyelyong Tshokhang to formally mark the completion of its term.
The first five years of parliamentary democracy are over and it’s again time to go to polls and elect a new council, a new government, a new parliament.
If the first polling experience [... Read More]
A quote from Thomas Jefferson, that a man who never looked into a newspaper was better informed than he who read them, set the tone of the last “Meet the Press” with the Cabinet ministers yesterday.
For almost every question reporters at the session raised, from the issues of Rupee problem, to development projects, to the Gyalpoizhing land case, it was reverted to how the Bhutanese media projected the government.
Was the media fair, was the question [... Read More]
For the past weeks, those eligible have been busy filling in and mailing their postal ballot to choose the candidate they want as councillor from their district.
As expected, some voters did lobby among friends and colleagues from the same dzongkhag to vote for a particular candidate, while others made some frantic calls, dug up old documents to get the correct thram number and name of chiwog properly filled in.
Some postal ballots are still being mailed, [... Read More]
There is all the more reason, and all the more good for us, to preserve the country’s rich forest cover at the percent stipulated in the Constitution.
It is also comforting to learn that, even in the absence of glaciers, the country’s many river systems would still sweep down the valleys.
All the more comforting still, particularly at this point in time when the country’s emphasis is on developing hydropower projects, that many of its river systems [... Read More]
A week from today, the nation will go to polls to elect 20 councillors, one from each district, from among 67 candidates.
The 20 elected, together with five eminent nominees, will form the national council, an apolitical institution and an integral part of the relatively new Bhutanese parliamentary system.
In most of the districts, the live public debates and common forum campaigns organised by the election have been completed or are winding up, which leaves candidates a [... Read More]
Recent news about lead content in rice, which some Bhutanese newspapers picked from those written in the international ones, have felt like a slap and left a scowl on the faces of rice exporters.
The more shocking this news becomes, at a time when the country is being seen as a bastion of clean environment, and the subsequent potential to become a nation to grow organic.
For these reasons emerge some obvious questions of how it was [... Read More]
What would happen if you pour a bucket of water into a small potted plant?
It will flood from the top and bottom and wash away the soil. The flowerpot itself might topple, the plant might break from the gush of water and the roots could rot in time.
This is the analogy some members of the Bhutanese intelligentsia like to draw, with regard to the investments being made in the hydropower sector, the backbone on which [... Read More]
The thing about reality shows is, it has just about everybody engaged in it, in our case it involves more children.
Parents are delighted to see their children, even if it is for a few minutes, on stage, on screen singing for the whole nation to listen to, watch and judge.
Children have been fed that information to have to perform their best and the rest of the Bhutanese audience sit in front of the screen enchanted, [... Read More]
It was a young parent, who came across the image of two underage girls on a localised facebook fashion page, and raised the alarm on how children were being depicted like adults.
This only reinforces the argument that parents and parenting have a key role to play in ensuring the safe and healthy development of children, girls in particular, growing up in today’s environment, where commercial and other influences are as powerful as they can get.
Given [... Read More]