The President of Druk Gaki Tshogpa (DGT) – the aspiring political party, on Friday, appealed to the High Court against Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB)’s decision to deny application for registration of his party.
DGT’s President, Chheku Dukpa, in his interview to BBS News said: “ I don’t accept the ECB’s decision.”
On March 17 this year, the ECB disqualified the application for registration of DGT as a political party. The commission in its notification stated, “The DGT’s application received on February 9 was subjected to due scrutiny and review against the provisions of the Constitution and the Electoral laws.”
The ECB justified that the applicant party submitted a final list of 308 registered members. However, irregularities in 29 cases were found with names not in electoral roll, names of religious personalities, mismatch of names and constituency mistake. Also, there were no members in two constituencies.
But, party’s president clarified that irregularities were in nine cases and not in 29 cases as pointed out by the ECB.
The ECB’s notification also stated that they received a final list of 25 potential candidates. Out of this, it was found that “two candidates are not registered members of the party and one appears to be a different person, of different gender.” “This was informed to the applicant party but no rectified list was received,” the notification added.
The commission further said there are no potential candidates for half of the 47 constituencies. “In terms of the profile of the candidates in the List submitted, it is found that 20 are in the 25 to 35 years age group; 4 between 35 to 45 years and 1 is a 46-year old with no person of public standing and demonstrated experience of leading a government or a public office or an established business.”
To this Chheku Drukpa said: “There is no law stating that this number of contestants should be there while registering. We just applied to get registered. We did not apply to run for elections. There’s no point in talking about the potential of the candidates while registering.”
The ECB also shared serious concerns on the party’s ideology, which is found to be general and nothing is mentioned about how the substantive task of national development is envisioned.
“The ECB knows whether an ideology is required or not. The way I see it, three political parties don’t even have it. Yet, we have included every detail including the party’s vision and mission,” said Chheku Dukpa, adding that they have done everything in line with the ECB’s rules. “They have treated us against the law. We did not get justice. Therefore we will appeal to the court,” he continued.
Chheku Dukpa also mentioned that, registration for a political party and registration for the elections is completely different. Druk Gaki Tshogpa submitted its application for registration in February this year.
