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Kathmandu Wednesday January 16, 2002 Magh 03, 2058.
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Bhutan preparing new constitution
Lhotsampas may be left out; a sham, says leaders
By Damakant Jayshi
KATHMANDU, Jan 15 : Bhutan has begun an
exercise to have its own written constitution with a 39-member Constitution Drafting
Committee headed by its Chief Justice, ostensibly a step towards ushering democracy in the
Buddhist Monarchy.
Bhutan which has no written constitution uses
the 1953 Royal decree for the Constitution of the National Assembly. In July 1998, a Royal
edict was ratified giving the National Assembly additional powers.
Significantly, however, there is not a single
Bhutanese Nepali in the Drafting Committee that includes, besides the CJ, all the 10
members of the Royal Advisory Council, Speaker of the National Assembly, five government
officials, two lawyers from the High Court and one representative each from 20 district
committees.
No wonder then that the refugee leaders are
sceptical of the move towards democratisation which does not include "even a single
genuine representative of ours". The leaders say the whole exercise is a
"sham", an attempt to hoodwink the international community which, of late, has
largely become critical of the Druk government vis-à-vis nearly 100,000 refugees of
Nepali origin who are languishing in the seven UNHCR camps in eastern Nepal.
Ratan Gazmere of AHURA, Bhutan, R Basnet of
Bhutan National Democratic Party and Rakesh Chhetri of CEMARD told The Kathmandu Post that
the monarch’s power in the Druk Kingdom would remain unaffected. While Gazmere and
Basnet termed it a "gimmick to hoodwink the international community, especially the
West that Bhutan is marching towards true democracy", Chhetri said Bhutan would be no
different from the erstwhile Panchayati raj in pre-1990 Nepal after the constitution is
enacted.
Basnet also remarked that they were not
surprised at the exclusion of Bhutanese Nepalis from the Drafting Committee as one of the
objectives of the regime in Bhutan was to deny citizenship to the refugees. "But I
fear that it is not only the refugees who will be at the receiving end of such an
exercise, but also those Bhutanese Nepalis who are currently in Bhutan," said Basnet.
The leaders’ scepticism is coupled with
apprehension too as they fear that the "discriminatory" 1985 law that was
"blatantly targeted against the Bhutanese Nepali" was likely to be a cornerstone
in the new constitution’s section dealing with citizenship. It was this law that
deprived many of the refugees of their Bhutanese citizenship, giving a ready tool to the
Druk officials to harass and forcefully evict them, allege the refugees.
With the representation of Bhutanese Nepali in
the 154-member National Assembly down from 16 (pre-1990, when the purge of the ethnic
Nepalis began) to under five now, Gazmere said that the "window dressing" was
going to make the repatriation of the refugees much more difficult. Although there are
representatives from southern Bhutan, the area chiefly inhabited by Lhotsampas (of
Nepalese origin), refugees allege they are actually the Sharchops (people from the east)
who have now been resettled in the lands owned by the refugees.
Gazmere said it was difficult to believe that
the Druk government’s intention was honest as far as making a fair constitution and
the repatriation of the refugees were concerned in the light of the "furious pace at
which resettlement is going on".
He suggested that Nepal should now admit the
inevitable: that the festering refugee imbroglio cannot be solved bilaterally.
"Nepal, which has been taken for a ride by Bhutan right since the refugee talks began
in 1993, should now openly admit that the two countries cannot resolve the issue and the
international community must step in actively."
The Nepal-Bhutan Joint Verification Team (JVT)
has already completed the verification process in the Khudunabari camp that houses over
12,000 refugees. The verification of the refugees in six other camps is still left.
Referring to the upcoming 12th round of
Ministerial Joint Committee meeting expected to be held in the third week of this month,
Gazmere dismissed it saying that the only "real outcome would be that they would
agree upon the dates for the next meeting".
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