Incoming Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley of the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa party is a staunch royalist supporting the 28-year-old King Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck.  The king is revered by the people who are not accustomed to hearing open criticism of their leaders. The king had to convince a skeptical population that adopting democracy was in the best interest of Bhutan’s future.

Official election results gave the DPT 44 of the 47 seats in the National Assembly.  Turnout was high with almost 80 percent of the more than 318,000 registered voters showing up to vote. The People’s Democratic Party won three seats and has been declared the opposition party. The European Union Election Observer Mission said the elections were a success and a step towards the transition to democracy.

The experiment with democracy had worried many of the mostly Buddhist population. The previous king began the shift to democracy before giving up the throne in 2006 and the new king has continued the trend.

Bhutan’s move to a constitutional monarchy is not the result of a revolution from below but instead comes from a slow and deliberate process pushed from above. However, the vote has not been without some cost and has brought up the old issue of Bhutan’s ethnic troubles with the Nepalese people who live in the southern part of the country. There has never been an open debate about the 1991 expulsion of 100,000 Nepalese from Bhutan who now live in refugee camps in Nepal. On the surface there is presently no official discrimination by the Buddhist Bhutanese against the Hindu Nepalese as shown by the fact that nine Nepalese were elected to parliament, but the problem remains unresolved.

The young king seems determined to continue with democratic reforms. Western educated, he went to boarding school in Massachusetts, and went to Wheaton outside Boston before graduating from Oxford University in the UK.

Click to return to Global Elections Watch Main Page