There was a heavy turnout of voters (80 percent) in the first ever conducted National Assembly election with which Bhutan officially bid farewell to the absolute monarchy which came into being in 1907. The Election Commission of Bhutan successfully conducted the election on 24 March 2008. As per the Constitution, Bhutan will be having a bicameral Parliament. The upper chamber of the national Parliament is known as the National Council to which elections were conducted in December 2007 and January 2008. The National Council consists of 25 members of which include five members nominated by the king. The 20 members of the National Council represent the 20 districts in the country. The National Assembly is the lower chamber of the Parliament.

The effort to make Bhutan a constitutional monarchy was initiated by Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the fourth king of Bhutan, in 2005. In March 2005 the Government of Bhutan brought out a Draft Constitution. In December 2005, he abdicated the throne in favor of his son the present King Jigme Khesar Namgye Wangchuck. The formation of the bicameral national parliament and the elections conducted were based on the Draft Constitution which is going to be ratified by the new parliament.

Democracy in Bhutan is a gift of the ruler to the people. It is democracy from above. The way Bhutan’s constitution came into being is an ample proof of that. Other countries where democracy came about as the result of people’s struggles, constitution used to be drafted by the duly elected constituent assemblies. The ratification of the constituent assemblies makes them sacrosanct. But in the case of Bhutan this did not happened. The king himself arrogated the role of the constituent assembly and came out with a constitution and it was accepted by the various sections of the ruling elite.

Bhutan is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious country. The transformation of Bhutan from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional one is actually a reaction of the ruling elite to the oppositional politics emerged in the country since the late 1920s. The oppositional politics in the country began from the people of Nepali origin in southern Bhutan. The over centralization of power and socio-cultural marginalization kept the people of Nepali origin always in the political periphery. The formation of the Bhutan State Congress (BSC) in 1952 was an important event in the history of oppositional politics in Bhutan. The BSC demanded for the granting of civil and political rights for all citizens, democratization of administration and the abolition of feudalism.

The political organizations which were formed in the wake of the movement against forced Bhutan like the Bhutan People’s Party (BPP), the Bhutan National Democratic Party (BNDP), the Druk National Congress (DNC) and the Bhutan Congress Party (BCP) and the human rights organizations like the People’s Forum for Human Rights, Bhutan (PFHRB). The carefully choreographed transition of Bhutan from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy is to deviate the attention of the international community from the resolution of the refugee crisis developed out of the forced Bhutan drive in the late 1980s and early 1990s and co-opt the emerging political dissent in Bhutan by its ruling elite.