Tag Archive for ‘Monarchy’ at Asian Window

Tag Archive for 'Monarchy'

Lessons in happiness for all the new kings on the block

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on November 10, 2008

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Michael Simkins in The National:

An extraordinary event occurred in world politics last week. The world’s newest head of an independent democracy was carried to power in an event that nobody who witnessed it will ever forget.

Even the circumstances of his triumph were significant, in that it was greeted by almost universal acclaim throughout the nation, as well as delivering him a clear mandate for government. Better still, the successful candidate was in the prime of his manhood, vigorous, dashing, and unblemished by corruption or wizened by age. Hallelujah!

No, not Barack Obama. Sorry, you obviously lost me for a moment there. I’m talking about the coronation of Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck as the new King of Bhutan.

How to beat the financial blues, Bhutan style

AFP reports from Thimphu:

“It’s the materialism, who can make the bigger buck, overnight fast money that caused the problems,” said Phurb Dorji, a doctor who works in a Thimphu hospital and is a big fan of the official national philosophy.

“The whole world is going towards materialism, and the more they get the more they want. But they’re still not happy. They don’t need to copy us, but they should take a look at other ways.”

Bhutan has been pursuing GNH for the past few decades: it was conceived by the country’s last king, and the new monarch — 28-year-old Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, who was crowned on Thursday — says it will remain a policy centrepiece.

His Majesty the Druk Gyalpo

Published

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on October 31, 2008

in Bhutan

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Bhutan will crown its fifth king, the 27-year-old Oxford-educated King Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, on November 6. Jigme Khesar became king late in 2006 after his father, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, abdicated. The coronation was delayed because astrologers said 2007 was not an auspicious time for the young king to be crowned. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck established a parliamentary democracy in the Himalayan Kingdom with the monarch as head of state.

Kinley Dorji at Kuensel on what the coronation means:

It is the end – and the beginning – of history. On the morning of November 1, the third day of the ninth Bhutanese month, His Majesty the King will be empowered as the Druk Gyalpo in a unique and sacred empowerment ceremony, which symbolises his transcendence of the ordinary and the temporal and the personification of divine wisdom.

His Majesty will receive the Dar Na-Nga, a special arrangement of the primary colours that signify the five elements. The ceremony will take place in the Machhen Lhakhang, and the Dar Na-Nga will be symbolically conferred by Zhabdrung Ngawang Namgyal, in the presence of the fourth Druk Gyalpo, with the empowerment prayer chanted by His Holiness the Je Khenpo.

The white, yellow, red, green, and blue silk scarves represent the elements – water, earth, fire, wind, and space – the basis of physical existence, that His Majesty personifies, as well as the underlying energies from which the physical world arises.

Nepal: the world’s newest republic

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on June 21, 2008

in Nepal

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In The Telegraph, UK, Thomas Bell reports from Kathmandu:

In his last act before leaving his palace last week, Nepal’s former king, Gyanendra, tried something he never attempted during his disastrous experiment with autocratic rule.

He decided to call a press conference – and for dismayed royalists the ensuing scene encapsulated the fall of an ancient institution that had collapsed from within.

Excited journalists climbed on the palace furniture. They posed for pictures in the chair where Gyanendra would sit, flanked by two stuffed tigers. When the ex-king arrived they heckled him with the rudest words in the Nepali language.

Royal flaws in focus at birth of Nepal’s republic

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on June 7, 2008

in Nepal

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From Reuters:

Kathmandu: Four people, clad in white mourning clothes, carried a dummy corpse in a bamboo coffin.

“Gyane is dead. We are carrying his body to the cremation grounds,” they said, using an abusive shortened form of King Gyanendra’s name.

Watching the crowds gathered to celebrate the birth of the republic of Nepal last Wednesday, it was clear to me they were not yet done protesting against the king.

I flashed back to 2001, when I was awoken by a midnight telephone call. An old friend was on the line, saying he had heard the Maoist insurgency had exploded a bomb in the royal palace.

The Maoists at that time were still classified as “low intensity”, mainly confined to remote villages and valleys in this Himalayan nation and I thought they did not yet have the strength to do this. I was right.

As a helicopter hovered in the sky and after frantic telephone calls, it became clear: Crown Prince Dipendra had massacred his parents and seven other royals at a family dinner, then shot himself.

Nepal’s ‘living goddess’ in limbo

Reuters report from Kathmandu:

The appointment of a new “living goddess” in Nepal is being held up by the recent abolition of the monarchy, a Nepalese official says.

According to tradition, the king’s priest appoints the girl, who is chosen in her infancy and is treated as a goddess, or Kumari, until puberty.

But the priest no longer has any say in the republic, the head of the trust overseeing the tradition says.

[Photo: The previous goddess, Sajani Shakya, retired in March]

The king gone, Nepal must confront a new danger

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on June 3, 2008

in Nepal

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Unless the deadlock over government formation is broken soon, the constitution writing process will be compromised, writes Siddharth Varadarajan in The HIndu:

Nearly a week after the abolition of the monarchy in Nepal, a democratically formed coalition government still eludes the world’s youngest republic. Instead of introspecting over the reasons for their defeat in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist-Leninists are behaving like victors. And the Maoists, who came first but still lack a majority, have yet to master the art of compromise without which there can be no coalit ional politics. At stake is not just the question of governance but something much more fundamental. For unless the deadlock over government formation is resolved quickly, the political atmosphere in the country will get so vitiated that enormous and perhaps irreparable harm will be done to the prospects of writing the country’s new constitution.

Nepal’s voters want the Maoists to lead the government and process of constitution writing, but only on the basis of power sharing. That is why they gave the former rebels 220 out of the 575 elected seats in the Constituent Assembly (CA) but withheld the two-thirds majority needed to allow them to run a single-party government under the terms of the interim constitution. Of course, the Maoists have never said they wanted to run the government by themselves. As soon as the election results became known six weeks ago, Chairman Prachanda extended an invitation to the others to join a government under his leadership. The terms of power sharing had been clearly spelt out by both the text of the interim constitution and the spirit of its working over the past 18 months and it was assumed that these arrangements would carry over.

The solitude of a king

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on April 20, 2008

in Nepal

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With the Maoists set to dominate the new Constituent Assembly, Nepal’s king may soon loose his crown. In The Indian Express, Yubaraj Ghimire weighs the royal options:

For almost two years now, King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev has been in isolation. He has become a ‘punching bag’ of sorts for Nepalese politicians and to some extent, the international community, a symbol for everything that ailed Nepal. And, of course, everybody holds him responsible for his fate. He is hardly spotted in public these days, and when he is, it is without the trapping of royalty. He remains mostly confined to the Narayanhiti Palace. Even this could be for a short while longer, for if the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoists (CPN-M) does what it has pledged to, Nepal will be a republic on the first day that the newly elected Constituent Assembly sits.

The emergence of the Maoists as the single-largest party in the forthcoming Assembly, and the likelihood of a government under its leadership, has sent out the message that time and tide don’t wait for anyone. And in this tsunami of change, Nepal-which lost its status as an officially Hindu nation two years ago-looks set to lose the world’s only Hindu monarch whose forefather began the Shah dynasty 240 years ago.

Nepal is now speculating over the king’s future. Will he seek asylum in India? Will he counter the political tide? Or will he live on in Nepal as an ordinary citizen?

Ballots over bullets

Published

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on April 19, 2008

in Nepal

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Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepali Times, in The Times of India:

Kathmandu: Mao is dead; long live Mao. The Great Helmsman maybe in a mausoleum in Beijing, but he is alive and kicking in Nepal.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Maoists were supposed to come to power by the barrel of the gun. In Nepal, they have been voted to power. With results of last week’s elections nearly in, it’s been a rout. The Maoists have got 50 per cent of the votes in the first-past-the-post ballot, with the mainstream Nepali Congress (NC) with just 14 per cent and other parties trailing further behind.

The result has left pundits scratching their heads, foreign embassies in Kathmandu are red-faced, the NC and CPN-UML are too stunned to even speak. Even the Maoists themselves were surprised by the vote.

Nepal’s Maoist landslide

An electoral earthquake reflects the social distance that had grown between Kathmandu’s elite and media and Nepal’s people, says Prashant Jha, a political analyst with Nepali Times, in OpenDemocracy:

The results of the general election in Nepal on 10 April 2008, won overwhelmingly by the Maoists – officially the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) – have come as a complete shock. Many people thought the former armed rebels would be a distant third, winning perhaps fifteen-to-twenty of the 240 seats directly elected to the constituent assembly under a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system (335 of the remainder are elected under proportional representation). Some argued that the Maoists would do better than conventional wisdom in the capital Kathmandu suggested, giving them about thirty-to-forty of the FPTP seats. Only a few voices sensed the people’s desperate yearning for change, the Maoist base among the young and marginalised, and flagged the possibility of the party coming in second – or first.

Triumph of the new mainstream in Nepal

By voting in the Maoists, the Nepali people have chosen the party most likely to push for an egalitarian society and inclusive republican system in the Constituent Assembly. Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu:

After failing to recognise the obvious groundswell of support that had built up for the Maoists in the run-up to the Constituent Assembly (CA) elections in Nepal, India needs to move quickly to adjust itself to the new power balance. Despite receiving reliable field reports of the widespread support the Maoists were enjoying across the country, South Block deluded itself into believing that the former rebels would be at best a distant third. Bogus surveys commissioned by t he U.S. embassy in Kathmandu in which the Maoists were shown as winning only 8 to 10 per cent of the popular vote started circulating within the corridors of power in New Delhi. Accordingly, the foreign office’s contingency planning revolved around coping with the fallout of a poor showing by the former rebels. Even here, the official assessments showed scant understanding of the ground reality with improbable scenarios like a Maoist “urban insurrection” being bandied about.

A house for King Gyanendra

Published

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on April 16, 2008

in Nepal

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As the Maoists widen their lead in the historic Nepal elections, it is clear that the monarchy’s days are numbered and King Gyanendra could be seeking a new home in India. Josy Joseph of DNA has the story

Facing a possible deposition at the hands of Maoists, Nepal’s unpopular king Gyanendra could seek refuge in India.

And the king’s new home could be a palace in Rajasthan’s Sikar district, hometown of his daughter-in-law Himani — wife of Nepal’s crown prince Paras Bikram Shah.

According to dependable sources crucial to India’s Nepal policy, the Indian government would accept and provide necessary security to the king if he opts for a peaceful life outside the Himalayan kingdom.

On AFP, the Nepal king’s royal priest sees a bad omen

A religious adviser to Nepal’s King Gyanendra has revealed that the already embattled monarch has been struck by yet more misfortune.

Not only is the king facing the rapid rise of ultra-republican Maoists who want to sack him, he has also been hit by a terrible omen: a 20-metre (66-foot) pole falling off a wooden chariot.

It may sound trivial to some, but Madhab Bhattarai — a Hindu priest, guru and close aide to the king since 2002 — said the tumbling pole was being taken very seriously behind the walls of the royal palace.

Hello Maoists, bye bye king

Published

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on April 13, 2008

in Nepal

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Former rebels are poised to take power in the beleagured kingdom of Nepal. But they must put aside a crime-tainted past and deliver reforms, writes Ed Douglas in The Guardian

Jubilant supporters of Nepal’s former rebel Maoists took to the streets yesterday to celebrate what they are already claiming as an election victory in the troubled Himalayan kingdom.

Preliminary results indicate the Maoists are well on the way to becoming the largest party in the country’s first elected constituent assembly, in elections aimed at cementing a peace deal that ended a decade of civil conflict. Their faces smeared with vermilion, several prominent Maoists who won seats, including their leader ‘Prachanda’, staged impromptu victory parades.

Previously in AW:

Nepal’s perilous ascent

Published

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on April 10, 2008

in Nepal

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Manjushree Thapa, the author of “Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy,” in The New York Times:

Nepalis will vote today for the first time since a democratic uprising in 2006 that rejected King Gyanendra Shah’s absolute rule and led to a peace deal that ended a 10-year Maoist insurgency. This is not an ordinary election. We will be voting for a 601-member constituent assembly that will draft a new constitution that most likely will abolish the monarchy and will certainly restructure Nepal.

It is compelling, and moving, to live through the remaking of one’s nation.

Still, Katmandu has grown hushed and watchful, and anxious, as Election Day has neared. In previous weeks, the political parties staged rallies, canvassed door to door, and filled the streets with scratchy loudspeaker announcements imploring us to vote.

[Nepal is voting in landmark elections today, March 10]

Nepal palace bloodbath princess talks for first time

Published

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on April 6, 2008

in Nepal

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‘I would never have been happy as queen’ says Nepali princess Devyani Rana. Dean Nelson in The Sunday Times, UK:

The princess whose forbidden love brought the Nepali royal family to its knees has returned to the Himalayan kingdom to canvass villagers in elections this week that will seal the fate of its king.

Devyani Rana is talking to local women to rally the royalist vote for her father’s political party in an election which is certain to abolish the monarchy and transform Nepal into a republic.

She is the woman for whose hand in marriage Crown Prince Dipendra battled with his family; a struggle that broke him mentally and led him to murder his parents in a palace bloodbath in June 2001.

In Nepal, monarchy fades from view

Published

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on April 3, 2008

in Nepal

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The royal past is being slowly rubbed away across the onetime Hindu kingdom of Nepal as the country prepares for a vote for a special assembly to rewrite the Constitution. From The New York Times:

Gorkha, Nepal: This is the cradle of the kingdom, from where, more than 250 years ago, a shrewd and ambitious king named Prithvi Narayan Shah set off to conquer faraway lands and create the nation now known as Nepal. Here today stands a gleaming white marble memorial in his honor, except that on the pedestal where his likeness once stood, His Majesty’s name inscribed below, there is now something decidedly less majestic: a pot of pink geraniums.

The king’s statue was toppled by Maoist insurgents last year. They dragged the head through the narrow cobblestone lanes of Gorkha, smashing it until it broke into pieces and singing, “Long Live the Maoists.”

What use is democracy to idyllic Bhutan?

Published

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on March 23, 2008

in Bhutan

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William Dalrymple in The Telegraph, UK:

There could be no better illustration of the virtues of an enlightened monarchy than Bhutan. Even before your plane touches down amid the steeply tiered rice terraces of the Paro valley, you realise how different this idyllic country is from its Himalayan neighbours.

Instead of the urban concrete sprawl of Kathmandu and Simla – romantic names, but disappointingly shabby realities – you pass over green hillsides dotted with large white Tibetan-style farmhouses made of stone and wood, with intricately carved balconies and verandahs.

Instead of clouds of pollution rising from corrugated iron roofing, there are thin wraiths of cloud hanging above thick conifer slopes. Instead of bare, deforested hills with landslips and erosion, there are great ranges of mountains clad with virgin deodar forests.

[Photo: The timber seats of the new parliament building being built in Bhutan]

Bhutan: First step towards democracy

Published

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on March 22, 2008

in Bhutan

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From Associated Press (via IHT):

Thimphu, Bhutan: The command came from the king, as commands normally do in a nation where royalty has ruled for a century. But when the Precious Ruler of the Dragon People spoke that day, he stunned this deeply isolated corner of the Himalayas: The age of monarchs is ending, he said, and power should be yours.

That was a little over two years ago. Now, on the eve of national elections Monday that will upend a system rooted in feudal monarchism, much of the country remains unconvinced there should even be a vote.

Just ask the candidates. “If you had a referendum, even today, Bhutan would reject democracy. That’s the ground reality,” said Khandu Wangchuk, the burly, gravel-voiced former foreign minister who is running for a seat in the western town of Paro. “But there’s no use wishing democracy away.”

What most people want is what they’ve always had: a powerful king.

[Photo: Bhutan's King and the Crown Prince]

Smile census: Bhutan counts its blessings

In The Wall Street Journal, Peter Wonacott reports from Thimphu:

GNH (Gross National Happiness) is about to face a series of big tests. On Monday, Bhutan will hold its first democratic election. That will install a parliament, pass a new constitution and dilute the powers of a popular monarch. Later this year, Bhutan plans to join the World Trade Organization, even though its industry comprises little more than high-end tourism and hydroelectric power.

As Bhutan enters these uncharted political and economic waters, its leaders want to prove that they can achieve economic growth while maintaining good governance, protecting the environment and preserving an ancient culture. To do that, they’ve decided to start calculating GNH. It means coming up with an actual happiness index that can be tracked over time.

[Photo: The Punakha dzong, one of Bhutan's most beautiful buildings]

Bhutan: Small wonder

Published

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on March 2, 2008

in Bhutan and Travel

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As the people of Bhutan prepare to go to the polls this month in the tiny Himalayan kingdom’s first general election, Patrick French discovers their remarkable achievements and asks how the success of a royal dynasty may have blunted the desire for democracy. In The Telegraph, UK:

Bhutan is the most beautiful country in the world. You fly in over the Himalayas, the plane cruising at the height of the mountain peaks, and watch the snow glistening in the sheer, sharp sunlight. A white blueness envelops the sky and, before you know it, the little Druk Air plane is dropping into a golden river valley and slaloming its way to Paro, the only airport in Bhutan.

You pass all the mountains: Cho Oyu, Mount Everest, Makalu, each peak spiking in a web of frosted snow and giving way to a further peak, the blank whiteness of the summit becoming a filigree of ice trails as your eyes descend to the lower ridges and see stepped fields and trees, the last great undestroyed Himalayan forests, and bump now on air pockets as the plane turns into the next valley and makes its way towards earth. The other passengers, Americans and Germans with padded ski jackets and virtuous hairstyles, are so busy crowding over to the left of the plane to snap photographs that I fear we will list to port.

[Photo: Would-be voters during another dummy run in December.]

Training reporters to cover elections

Andrea Bernstein, political director of New York Public Radio WNYC, was selected to train 20 Bhutanese reporters as the country prepares for its first-ever elections. The invitation came from Bhutan’s daily newspaper, Kuensel. Bernstein spent a week in Bhutan. Read her blog:

…Today, we began the training (because of the time difference, we were actually going head to head with the Oscars). We were overwhelmed by the response – twenty journalists were supposed to show up, forty three came. One drove “two-days journey” – she actually did in 15 hours by driving through until 3 am over the national highway, the road that hairpins through the Himalayas. Some of the journalists were brand new, but all took their craft amazingly seriously. We were a bit worried that we’d have to draw them out, needlessly so, it turned out. This was a group keenly aware of the history that is taking place in Bhutan, and in the important role they’ll have in shaping it.

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