29 March, 2008 - The People’s Democratic Party’s representation in the National Assembly was further reduced to two seats from three on Thursday, with the Election Commission of Bhutan admitting that it had made a mistake in the vote tally of the Phuentsholing constituency under Chukha dzongkhag.
A notification from the election commission said that the Druk Phuensum Tshokpa (DPT) candidate, Chencho Dorji, and not Rinzin Dorji of People’s Democratic Party (PDP) had won from Phuentsholing. On the evening of March 24, PDP’s Rinzin Dorji had been declared the winner with a margin of four votes.
Election commission officials explained that, in the rush of receiving and recording the election results, read out over the telephone from the constituency’s 37 polling stations, the returning officer had wrongly recorded 200 additional votes in favour of the PDP candidate from the Pachu polling station.
Election officials normally refer to the candidates as “Candidate 1 and 2”. When the Pachu polling officer said “Candidate 2 – 98”, it was recorded as 298 votes in favour of Rinzin Dorji.
With that 200 erroneous additional votes stripped from Rinzin Dorji’s initial total of 3,646 votes, his vote came down to 3,446 against DPT’s Chencho Dorji’s 3,642 votes.
The returning officer in Phuentsholing detected the error while compiling his report on the election result based on the hard copy of the result sheets, attested by the respective counting representatives of the two candidates.
Rinzin Dorji sounded disgruntled over the announcement and said it was hard for him to accept such a twist. “It’s so devastating and a blow to my self-esteem,” said Rinzin Dorji, his voice trembling over the phone. “Who’s responsible for the damage caused to my dignity?”
He said that it would have been acceptable had the election commission officials informed him about the change in the results the very next day after the results were declared.
Pachu polling station, he said, was just about an hour’s walk and the election officials on duty could have simply crosschecked the results as soon as it arrived. “I have all the reason to be suspicious,” he said. “Who’s going to believe that now?”
The actual elect, DPT’s Chencho Dorji, who now leads with a comfortable 196 votes, said that he was on his way to the office of the returning officer to crosscheck the figures from places where he was certain of winning, when word of the mistake in the tally reached him. “It was a mere four-vote difference and I couldn’t believe losing, knowing that I had such overwhelming support,” said Chencho Dorji.
The notification issued this week said that the commission deeply regretted the inconvenience it caused and that the chief election commissioner accepted the responsibility for the “serious lapse”. The officer concerned was also warned for the slip-up.
By Samten Wangchuk
samme@kuensel.com.bt
