Kesang Dema
Kuensel Online
April 23, 2013
As Bhutan heads to the polls for another time to put in place a new Parliament, starting with the National Council election today, the persistent rainfall for the last few days could dissuade some voters from making their votes count.
Despite being “election ready”, the Election Commission of Bhutan’s chief election commissioner, Dasho Kunzang Wangdi, said he was worried about the weather.
“We’re expecting a good voter turnout, but rain might deter people from voting in some difficult places,” he said. “But we’re as prepared as we can be.” He said yesterday that he was hopeful the weather would clear today, as “it always did in Bhutan whenever there was a national occasion”.
“Whatever the difficulty, I request voters to brave it and say nothing can stop a Bhutanese to achieve,” he said.
Put to test today are the 67 National Council candidates, ranging from ages 25 to 58, from across the country, out of which, Bhutanese voters will vote in one candidate from each dzongkhag. Together, with the five eminent members His Majesty will appoint, those elected will go on to form the country’s second National Council.
Many following the elections have their eyes on 14 former council members, who are re-contesting for yet another term this time. The candidates also comprise a number of teachers and tour guides, corporate employees, recent graduates, actors and those who contested the first council and assembly elections, among others. There are five women candidates among the lot.
Of the dzongkhags, Dagana and Trashigang will go for uncontested elections with just one candidate each. Samtse has the highest number of candidates contesting, followed by Tsirang with six. Encouraging everyone to vote, chief election commissioner, who will be voting at the Motithang Higher Secondary School polling station today, reminded every voter that they are the “boss” of their destiny.
“If you’re not the candidate, your destiny can be assured by you casting your secret ballot on the poll day,” he said yesterday. “For the National Council, your chance is only tomorrow till 2018. Would you want to regret for missing this chance?”
Election commission has listed 380,099 voters on the final electoral roll. About 31,500 were expected to vote by post, with returning officers having accepted their postal ballot applications. The only hitch so far has been in flying polling officials and electronic voting machines to one of the remotest gewogs in the country, Lunana.
With several failed attempts because of bad weather, Dasho Kunzang Wangdi said they would try until noon today. If it remains unsuccessful, polls for Lunana will be postponed and EVMs from others gewogs in Gasa will be secured to be counted at a later date, along with the Lunana result. “It isn’t a big issue,” he said.
Otherwise, there are about 5,000 election officials and security people placed in 850 polling stations across the country to conduct the poll today.
To ensure that polling stations are not more than two hours away from people, and also to have less than 1,000 people voting at one polling station, the commission had to construct 215 temporary polling stations.
Meanwhile, some voters from around the country have travelled to their villages to vote. A Trashigang resident, Tempa, said although it was not necessarily in droves, there were private cars coming in every now and then. Southern dzongkhags like Tsirang saw people hitching bus rides to the dzongkhag.
Those from neighbouring western dzongkhags working in Thimphu were seen driving to their gewogs after office hours. Many political party candidates, awaiting their turn, have also headed back to their villages to take part in the council elections.
Initially, 81 individuals had come forward with aspirations to take part in the council elections, but some of them were filtered out through gewog zomdus and nomination processes.
The first National Council elections saw a total of 52 candidates contesting the 20 National Council seats. About 53 percent of the total 312,502 registered voters voted.
