from the hip

Bhutan, a tiny country between China and India, in the Himalayan Mountains, has joined the ranks of the world’s democracies. According to Guardian:

Despite apathy among the 318,000 voters on becoming enfranchised, the 28-year-old Oxford-educated King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wanghuk pushed ahead with the polls to “modernise” Bhutan, exhorting people to vote. In the end turnout topped 70%, although yesterday many voters admitted they preferred monarchy to democracy. “His Majesty is like our father. We all prefer our father,” Karma Tsheweng, a 35-year-old mechanic, told reporters in the capital, Thimphu.

This is an interesting story. A process of democratization initiated by a ruling King, not because he is forced to do it, but because he thinks it is right to do it. A King educated in the West, and inspired by the political ideas dominant in the West. In actually working actively to convince a people that didn’t want democracy about the virtues of it.

Even the old king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, have traveled around in the country advocating democracy. It is hard to say whether the King and ex-King were pleased with the result:

The first parliamentary election in the history of the last independent Himalayan kingdom, Bhutan, produced a landslide with voters decisively rejecting the party led by the king’s uncle.

In a shock result the Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) or Bhutan United party led by Jigmi Thinley, a former prime minister and canny diplomat close to the country’s bureaucracy, won more than 40 out of the 47 seats in the new national assembly. Thinley is credited with provided the intellectual framework for “Gross National Happiness”, rooted in the Buddhist idea that economic growth alone does not bring contentment.

But the important thing, whether the result was pleasing or not to the royal faimily, is that they accept it. And it seems they have.

This is an incredible interesting story. Bhutan deserves all the support it can get from the West in this experiment. A new path to democracy, no less!