In the space of two days, we got to know who is going to lead the world's most powerful democracy and newest. Barack Obama will become the next President of the United States of America and Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck will be the new King of the Bhutan in South Asia.
Bhutan's experiments with democracy is unusual in the sense that it is top-down instead of bottoms up. The previous King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, 52 had decided that Bhutan should change with the rest of the world and adopt a better political structure. But he was concerned with any rapid change disrupting this highly traditional Buddhist Kingdom. There was a lot of protest by the people when he announced his decision to convert Bhutan to a constitutional monarchy (maybe like Great Britain in the future). He announced elections where two political parties campaigned on almost similar pro-monarchy agenda. As the next step, he announced the handover of his post to his eldest son and hence the coronation.
These seem to be good times for democracy in the South Asian neighbourhood and would be interesting to see how the little kingdom evolves under the new 'tyrant'.
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