Bhutan Election Commission has announced that the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), with a liberal and progressive orientation, won the parliamentary elections which took place on 9 January, obtaining 30 of the 47 seats in the lower house. The new government will therefore almost certainly be led by its leader, Tshering Tobgay, former prime minister from 2013 to 2018. The other party that participated in the elections after passing a first round, the Tendrel Party of Bhutan (BTP), obtained the remaining 17 seats. The turnout was 65.6 percent.
Bhutan is a small country located on the slopes of the Himalayas, on the border between China and India. It is about the size of Switzerland, and has a population of around 800,000 people. The elections were dominated by economic issues, despite the fact that the country is known in the rest of the world mainly for having included the concept of Gross National Happiness in its Constitution. This indicator was developed to better represent the well-being of citizens compared to the purely economic parameters of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
– Read also: What is Gross National Happiness
Youth unemployment is very high in the country (at 29 percent, according to the World Bank) and GDP growth is relatively slow for an Asian country, averaging 1.7 percent per year. Both parties participating in the elections had promised large investments to boost growth. The winning party, the PDP, claims to be committed to developing the steel and cement industries to create new jobs.
The Bhutanese electoral system is based on the majoritarian principle: the country is divided into 47 constituencies, in each of which each party presents a candidate. The one who gets the most votes in the constituency is elected to parliament.