Sounds weird isn't it? Well, some thing weird happened in the first general election of Bhutan.
Of the two political parties, The Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) and People Democratic Party (PDP), the DPT had a sweeping victory in the election. Out of the 47 parliamentary seats, they won 44 and PDP only 3. According to the latest news, the number of the seats of PDP had come down to two as a mistake was made while counting the votes.
The incident took place in the village of Phuentsholing under Chukha dzongkhag (refers to district in Bhutanese language). Chencho Dorji stood from DPT and Rinzin Dorji from PDP. Kuensel Online reports:
Election commission officials explained that, in the rush of receiving and recording the election results, read out over the telephone from the constituency’s 37 polling stations, the returning officer had wrongly recorded 200 additional votes in favour of the PDP candidate from the Pachu polling station.
Election officials normally refer to the candidates as “Candidate 1 and 2”. When the Pachu polling officer said “Candidate 2 – 98”, it was recorded as 298 votes in favour of Rinzin Dorji.
With that 200 erroneous additional votes stripped from Rinzin Dorji’s initial total of 3,646 votes, his vote came down to 3,446 against DPT’s Chencho Dorji’s 3,642 votes.
Later, the return officer of Phuentsholing detected the mistake and informed others. PDP candidate Rinzin Dorji was very much unhappy with this incident. When asked about the mistake, he said that it caused him great dishonor.
The election held in Bhutan on March 24 was a big step toward democracy. The Druk Phuensum Tshogpa (DPT) led by Jigmi Thinley had a major victory. In an interview, when asked about the major cause of PDP's defeat he said that at a time when people were very much confused, PDP promised too much change. In addition, during the election campaign PDP party workers presented some unrealistic goal to its campaign managers and leaders.
Related articles:
Kuensel Online (1)
Kuensel Online (2)
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Tracked on: April 20, 2008 10:55 AM | Permalink to Trackback