Left Flank

The Atlantic's Graeme Wood on Buddhist democracy nails it:

There may be something or nothing to learn about democracy from these spectacles. The first suggests that the movement for Tibetan independence does not answer only to the Dalai Lama, and that China may have a bigger problem, with a wider and more distributed base, than it thought. Would Lhasa consider exchanging the unquestioned rule of Hu Jintao for something more than the unquestioned rule of Tenzin Gyatso? As for the Bhutanese monarch, all signs point to democracy -- except for the often and freely expressed desire of the Bhutanese to keep and revere the monarchy, with or without elections. Whatever else this shows, it should put rest to the notion that democratization of the Buddhist street is any simpler -- or more welcome -- than democratization of the Arab one.

Second place in thought-provoking quotes, though, goes to French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner:

On Wednesday, Kouchner told RMC radio and BFM television that the boycott was not a bad idea. But "it seems unrealistic," he said. "There are a lot of good ideas that can't be put into practice."

"When you're dealing in international relations with countries as important as China, obviously when you make economic decisions it's sometimes at the expense of human rights," he added. "That's elementary realism."

It's no time for sycophantic devotion to one political course, religion, leader, or even state, especially when repression seems to be expanding.

The Bhutanese electorate is voting because they have no choice, between two parties without a disagreement, and to retain as much of the ancien regime as possible. Just last year, some Bhutanese believed democracy did not fit the Buddhist kingdom.

According to a quote in a CNN report, "It's not that the people of Bhutan don't want democracy. They want monarchy more," Dorji said. "Monarchy has been a success story in this country. We've always had very good kings."

And, there's a darker side.

In 1990, tens of thousands of ethnic Nepalis were forced out of Bhutan after protesting against the imposition of national dress and the closure of Nepali language schools. More than 100,000 now live in crowded camps inside Nepal.

A similar number still live in southern Bhutan, but exiled groups say tens of thousands have been denied identity cards – and thus voting rights – making »a mockery» of the election.

»The strategy is to depopulate people of Nepali origin from the country,» Narad Adhikari of the Druk National Congress, an exile group, said in Kakarvitta, on the India-Nepal border. »If they don't have voting rights, their citizenship is in danger.»

Rebel groups, with recruits largely drawn from the refugee camps, have emerged in the past year and have threatened to disrupt the polls. They have detonated 11 bombs inside Bhutan this year, killing at least one person.

Now, that sounds like a controversy worthy of the people's decision.