Article 7 of the Constitution is about our fundamental rights. Section 3 of that important article declares that “A Bhutanese citizen shall have the right to information”. By this provision, any citizen has the right – a fundamental right – to ask the government for any information. And the government must provide that information, whatever [...]
Elections are the single most important part of a democracy. They allow people to participate in the democratic process by directly choosing who they want as their representatives in the parliament. And they provide political legitimacy to elected representatives and to democratic governments. That’s why it’s important to allow as many people as possible to [...]
News that certain powerful people, including the prime minister and ministers in the current cabinet, were given large tracks of land, illegally, in Gyelpozhing has shocked our people. News that that land had originally belonged to poor farmers, many of whom are now destitute, has angered our people. This is terrible news. It’s alleged that [...]
Uncontested elections are generally walkovers for the lone candidates. That’s why they’re called “uncontested” elections. Since uncontested elections have only one contesting candidate, that candidate is automatically declared the winner. But not in Bhutan. Our electoral laws allow voters to cast their ballots even if there’s only one candidate is running. According to Sections 575 [...]
The Election Commission of Bhutan have now completed seven rounds of elections. Of the seven, last Monday’s local government elections was by far the largest and most complex. It was also the most successful. ECB officials, including those in the dzongkhags, worked round the clock, for months on end, to organize the elections. They were [...]
After several friends suggested it, I’ve added a new page called “News clips”. The idea is to provide links to news articles, especially to critical ones, that talk about what the opposition party and I have been doing. The first link is to a story by Kuensel. It’s about the growing influence of social media [...]
About a month ago, I posted the question on Facebook that asked: “What should the National Assembly discuss during the coming session?” A whopping 1366 of my “friends” voted on the 73 answers they generated themselves. This morning the situation looked like this: The top five answers, as you can see, are the Tobacco Act, [...]
The Prime Minister, on behalf of the National Council, National Assembly and two political parties, has brought before me the issue of the candidates disqualified from participating in Local Government elections. The 90 disqualified candidates have also jointly submitted an appeal on the same issue. The members of the National Council have submitted their concerns [...]
210 candidates have been disqualified from taking part in the local government elections. These candidates, all of whom had been members of a political party, were disqualified as it has not yet been one year since they resigned from their respective political parties. Actually all of them had resigned from their political parties more than [...]
An important conversation that took place on my facebook page recently:
Tshering Tobgay is a Member of Parliament representing Sombaykha Constitutency in Haa. He is the Leader of the Opposition Party in the National Assembly of Bhutan.
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