Educating ourselves

Posted inLegislature21 Comments
In 2010, when the government announced that 1,000 acres of land had been allocated to build the Education City, I had worried that, “government policy is being formulated around a particular project.” Formulating government policy to benefit one particular project is never a good idea. There’s simply too much room for conflict of interest, favoritism and corruption. But the government is not satisfied. They want to bestow even more support to the Education City project. They now want to enact a law specifically designed to benefit this one particular project. So today, the government introduced the Education City Bill…

Consolidate schools

Posted inEconomy5 Comments
In 2007, the year before the elections, when the interim government started work on the 10th Five Year Plan, they decided to “consolidate” the nation’s schools. Their rationale was that children in rural Bhutan were not receiving proper schooling as education resources were being spread too thin across the country. The interim government figured that since the number of children in our villages was falling, it would be better and cheaper to take village children to well-established and well-run schools rather than making them attend ill-equipped and inadequately staffed schools in their villages. But after the elections, the new…

Oath of Allegiance

Posted inLegislature1 Comment
The 8th Session of the Parliament began yesterday. The 8th session will be remembered as, during the inaugural ceremony, the Members of Parliament took the Oath of Allegiance to His Majesty the King. I’m posting a (unofficial) translation of the Oath of Allegiance as a reminder of our promise to serve our King, our country and our people to the best of our abilities. We bow at the feet of the supreme golden throne of the Druk Gyalpo Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the upholder of the Chhoe-sid-nyi of Bhutan. We, the Members of the First Parliament of Bhutan, hereby…