Freedom House asks Bhutan to eliminate NOC, PCC and SCC
New York, September 26: America based democracy watchdog, Freedom House in its new report said, Bhutan underwent major political changes in the last three years but expressed concern over the discriminatory legal provisions in laws.
The report entitled ‘Countries at the Crossroads 2007’ has, however, made several recommendations that Bhutanese government should do go with democratic transition.
The Freedom House said that the Bhutanese government should acknowledge the rights of Lhotshampa citizens and amend the Citizenship Act in order to make the process of gaining citizenship more transparent, starting with elimination of the No Objection Certificates, Police Clearance Certificates, and Security Clearance Certificates.
It said, the act governing nongovernmental organizations should be drafted and promulgated in order to strengthen the legal basis of such organizations and ensure greater local participation and accountability, local level administrative autonomy should be enhanced, and local elected officials held accountable for their actions.
The FH further said, “A bill should be introduced to strengthen, regulate, and protect in practice and under law the right to information, as a basic tool to strengthen democracy.”
The Public Accounts Committee must be more proactive and have the ability to request a report from any government agency. All government agencies should be required to submit annual reports before the Committee within a clearly specified time period.
New laws specifically protecting whistleblowers should be enacted to protect both public and private employees from reprisals for bearing witness against waste, fraud, and other abuses of power.
The FH also asked the government to make all court cases, as well as the police investigations and allegations of misconduct, available in writing to the public and increase funding and continue legal training programs to fill the critical need for qualified judges and lawyers.
It said the government should encourage the creation of the Jabmi Tshogde and Bar Association to increase the quality and accountability of lawyers and access to them.
Further, the government should invest greater efforts to promote civic awareness among citizens, especially rural populations, women, and minority groups by disseminating pamphlets explaining the process and holding meetings in which the draft constitution and the political process are explained in minority languages and create a task force to evaluate the problem of female illiteracy and seek out international donors to contribute resources to tackle the problem.
Rules for choosing representatives for both houses of the legislature must facilitate adequate representation of politically underrepresented regions and demographic groups by setting a quota for female and minority candidates within each party. Bhutan News Service