Bhutan

Mountainous, landlocked country in the eastern Himalayas (southeast Asia), bounded north and west by Tibet (China) and to the south and east by India.

Government
Bhutan is a hereditary limited monarchy in which the king, known as the Druk Gyalpo (Dragon King), assisted by a royal advisory council, works in consultation with a council of ministers, an elected national assembly (Tshogdu), and the monastic head of Bhutan's Buddhist priesthood. The 154-member Tshogdu, which includes 105 representatives directly elected for three-year terms, is required to pass a vote of confidence in the king by a two-thirds majority every three years and has the power to replace the monarch. The royal council, which in practice originates most legislation, consists of ten members – two are nominees of the king, two are Buddhist monks, and six are ‘people's representatives’, endorsed by village assemblies and the Tshogdu. All serve five-year renewable terms. Executive administration is the responsibility of the council of ministers, which is headed by the king and is responsible to the Tshogdu. Bhutan's 2005 draft constitution provides, from 2008, for a two-chamber legislature, comprising a directly elected 75-member lower chamber (Tshogdu) and a 25-member upper chamber (National Council), comprising five members appointed by the King and 20 directly elected to represent the districts (dzongkhags). Power remained vested in the king, but with a retirement age set at 65 years and authority given to the two chambers of the legislature to force abdication with a three-quarters majority vote. Formerly an absolute monarchy, with no political parties permitted, from 1998 Bhutan made cautious steps towards democracy, with the new constitution offering the possibility of political parties.

History
Bhutan was ruled by Tibet from the 16th century and by China from 1720. In 1774 the British East India Company concluded a treaty with the ruler of Bhutan, and British influence grew during the 19th century. A short border war in 1863 ended with a treaty in 1865, under which an annual subsidy was paid by Britain to Bhutan. In 1907 Uhyen Wangchuk, the first hereditary monarch, was installed, and under the 1910 Anglo-Bhutanese Treaty, Bhutan became a British protectorate, with internal autonomy but with foreign relations controlled by the British government in India.

After India's independence in 1947, an Indo-Bhutan Treaty of Friendship was signed in 1949, under which Bhutan agreed to seek Indian advice on foreign relations but not necessarily to accept it. There is no formal defence treaty, but India would regard an attack on Bhutan as an act of aggression against itself. In 1959, after the Chinese annexation of Tibet, Bhutan gave asylum to some 4,000 Tibetan refugees, most of whom chose , in 1979, to take Bhutanese citizenship, with most of the rest moving to India.

Ethnic tensions and the move toward democracy
In 1952 King Jigme Dorji Wangchuk came to power, and in 1953 a royal decree gave him absolute power, but also established a national assembly. In 1968 the king appointed his first cabinet. He died in 1972 and was succeeded by his Western-educated son Jigme Singye Wangchuk.

In 1988 the Buddhist Dzongkha ethnic minority, which the king headed, imposed its own language, religious practices, and national dress on the divided, but mainly Hindu-Nepali majority community and suppressed the Nepalese language and customs. This, and deportation from 1989 of hundreds of thousands of non-Bhutanese increased ethnic tension and the Nepalese illegally formed a number of political parties to protest against Dzongkha policies. Several hundred people were reported to have been killed during security crackdowns on pro-democracy demonstrations in 1990, and in 1993 the leader of the banned Bhutan People's Party was sentenced to life imprisonment for ‘anti-national activities’.

From 1998, when the king gave up his absolute veto power and the right to nominate and chair the cabinet, and gave the National Assembly the right to dismiss him through a two-thirds no-confidence vote, there were moves towards a constitutional limited monarchy. A draft constitution was unveiled in 2005 and the 50-year-old king announced that he would abdicate in favour of his son, Crown Prince Penlop, in 2008, to coincide with the first national elections and introduction of a new constitution.