MY PLEDGES, A TRIBUTE TO MY KINGS

As a young lad I was blessed to have come across his Majesty during one of his visits to Jakar High School. One thing that has had a lasting impact on my life was his Majesty’s wisdom laden statement that the future lies in the hands of our youth while attitude is all that matters. Those days I wondered why His majesty meant by this statement but today I am no more that little boy but a grownup who is striving to do what His Majesty envisioned. My generation of young people along with his Son, my king, were immensely blessed to have his Majesty the Fourth King as our North Star. During that visit, I was amongst those many young boys trying to catch hold of sweets His majesty the King and their Majesties the Queens threw in the crowd while they smiled at us. I got few chocolates to cherish. However, his Majesty’s advice for us to study hard to serve our nation was the one that germinated a seed of patriotism in me. I consider my generation as the golden generation of our country for the fact that I had one foot in the medieval while another in modern Bhutan. I had that experience of living a life without electricity and a life in modern Bhutan with every possible modern facility at my disposal making my life far comfortable and easier than those days. This drastic transition, which happened within my lifetime, is something noteworthy and I have no doubt that without His Majesty’s dynamic leadership and farsightedness, what we embrace today would have been a distant dream. I still have some faint memory of early 90s, a small uprising of some people in the South. That uprising created chaos and fear amongst people in general and I was one young boy who was deeply affected by it. My brothers were in boarding schools while one of my elder brothers joined militia but back home I had to join some of our village elders in night petrol especially in guarding our Chamkhar Bridge and some village stupas. I also remember our village elders engaged in prayers dedicated to the immediate resolution of the Southern problem. This was in fact the real test to His Majesty’s formidable leadership. It did not take much time to resolve the conflict. His Majesty restored the peace while security of our sovereign nation was enhanced. It seemed that His majesty had foreseen the Southern uprising way back in 70s because His Majesty like his Father stressed much on the concept of One Nation, One People. Through the concept of One nation, one people, people from different creeds, ethnic backgrounds and castes could actually come together to live in perfect harmony. However, few awful people actually overlooked that and they jolted our long cherished peace and harmony for awhile. In retrospection, I feel that without His Majesty’s firm viable decision and farsightedness, Bhutan would have never achieved the unprecedented national unity since then. The great Fourth is truly a destined leader who has blessed Bhutan and her people for many years. People call his Majesty a reincarnation of great Zhabdrung or some other great Buddhist Masters and sometimes even the Buddha of Compassion but to me His Majesty has always been a true leader destined to guide the blessed country and her fortunate people. As someone stated, his Majesty’s wisdom is as spacious as the clear blue sky, which he uses everyday in guiding his every decision that pertains to our national interest. Over the period of time, one of His Majesty’s most significant leadership traits that I learned is that His Majesty is never bias or partial. He is unshakably just and fair irrespective of gender, caste or even blood relationship. Honestly, I always try to inculcate this trait in my daily helping profession. This has always amazed me because I find very rare people with this trait and I feel that if every Bhutanese leader adopts this rare trait, I am sure we can literally prevent so called nepotism, cronyism or corruption at all levels in our country. On this auspicious 60th birthday, more than the praises we offer to His Majesty, it would please him if all of us be just and fair in our profession or day-to-day duties and commit to refrain from any corrupt practice, which is actually costing our nation a great pain that would cripple our beautiful country in long run. I take this honor to make my pledge that if I continue to work as a civil servant, I will make sure that knowingly I will never involve in any corrupt practice or in any activity that may possibly undermine our sovereignty. If by luck, if I land up in politics, I shall never compromise our national interest with that of my political mission. I wish that all the politicians put our national interest before their political agenda while people when they cast their votes they do it wisely for someone who can serve the King, Government and People sincerely with high degree of integrity. Democracy was an unexpected yet priceless gift from our great Fourth to the people of Bhutan. Democracy in many countries has cost millions of lives and so much of bloodshed but in Bhutan despite peoples’ reluctance, his Majesty gifted it to us. This was a clear indication that his Majesty always put forefront the general interest of the people of Bhutan before his personal motive. I wish that on this auspicious day that all the political parties come together and pledge that they will never divide the people of Bhutan into various parties unlike the 2008 election, which apparently saw division of people into PDP and DPT. This was neither His Majesty’s dream nor his intention. It was very clear from the beginning that his Majesty delivered the Democracy to us with the hope that government formed by the people would serve the people better. With apparent rifts back in the villages, within families and friends, I was not so happy with the way Democracy actually unfurled in Bhutan, which has actually inspired me to write my poem “Anti-Democratic”. I craved for complete Monarchy to be re-instated because people of Bhutan were never in absolute unity than we were under the complete Monarchy. Corruption seemed more pervasive under democratic rule while the Losing party members did not seem to rejoice the victory parade of the reigning Government. I feared that Democracy was never meant for a small country like ours when we have our dynamic, steadfast, farsighted and most compassionate but firm King to rule and lead us. The King treated us as one citizen while democratically elected leaders always favored their party partisans and put their party’s interest before the national agenda. Do not wrong me, I do not mean that we should get back to the complete Monarchy because that is something which our great Fourth has never envisaged. His Majesty intended that Democracy is the best governance to the people in general and now we must make pledge that we shall cast our vote wisely and choose our leaders who will always put our national interest before their Party’s and their own. Let’s make vow on this auspicious day that we shall not cast our vote in expectation of certain personal favor or based on our connections or affiliations with the party and their members. Let’s cast our vote to live by the vision that His Majesty set for Bhutan and her People. Let’s all make this solemn oath that we shall never treat our right to cast vote a commodity that can be sold and bribed for our personal favor but always respect it as the most priceless gift from our great Fourth, that has also come with a huge national responsibility on each one of us. Late 90s and early 2000s were in fact the turbulent time in Bhutan. ULFA, BODO and KLO, the groups of disturbing bullies, the Indian insurgents intruded the Southern part of our sovereign nation. His Majesty did his best to resolve the situation through polite diplomatic means but this approach virtually made them more obdurate and courageous. In fact they began to underestimate our small sized army without realizing that it was led by our King of Destiny. On 16th December 2003, our great Fourth meticulously executed the plan that he schemed for so long. Our army led by His Majesty vanquished our bullies and fortified our national security and restored our shaken peace and harmony. Prior to the insurgent flush-out, His Majesty travelled far and wide of our country meeting the people of Bhutan in expectation of good turnout of militias. Many people with good verbal talents made promises and assured His majesty that they would send more number of militias to supplement our small sized army to face the multiple insurgent groups. Alas, the militia turnout was staggeringly low compared to the promises made by those local and regional leaders. Despite low turnout, our great Fourth did not lose his hope or courage but assured the people of the victory and continued peace and harmony. During that time, I was in my first year in teaching college and many of us wanted to join the militia but our King wanted us to study. In reflection, we either did not know the protocol of joining the militia or our Director Dr. Jagar Dorji did not give us the required information that would have given us the clear picture about how to join the militia. In either ways, I am ashamed to say that we lacked absolute commitment. Today, on this auspicious day of our great Fourth, let’s make pledge that we shall henceforth if our nation requires our service, we shall not simply offer our fake promises but we shall prove our words by action attending to any call of our national duty at any point of time. Let’s make our pledge that during the time of such crises that all of us who are able will join the militia and together as one face any might of our enemies. During those days, there were people who actually sold (metaphorically) our country to those insurgents for their personal benefits. The act of treachery by our own people was something least expected by our King. Let’s make a pledge on this auspicious day that we shall at no cost involve or act in the manner that shall breach and undermine our national peace and security. Let’s vow that we shall never commit any act of treachery even at the cost of our own lives. I make my pledge that I shall never commit any act of treachery even at the cost of my own life while I will teach my children about the act of loyalty to the king and the country. I will also teach our young people the value of our national security than the amount of benefit that we may gain through any act of treachery. The Traitor must be the term that shall gradually disappear from our Bhutanese list of vocabularies and I make my pledge that I shall teach the values of loyalty and patriotism to the younger generation who will of course be the future of our nation. At 16, our great Fourth became the youngest leader in the world and he further amazed the world by his profound concept of Gross National Happiness. The GNH is a philosophy of development that actually contradicts with the GDP. Bhutan has been guided by this profound principle over four decades and today the world around try to emulate us because what we have achieved through GNH is something that has been very elusive even to those richest nations in the world. The GNH is based on four pillars: Good Governance, Preservation and promotion of culture, sustainable and equitable socioeconomic development and preservation and conservation of our natural environment. I am of a view that we have championed in the area of preservation of Environment and culture. However, there is a lot of thing that we need to work in the area of socioeconomic development and good governance. To me personally, we must do a lot in achieving the pillar of good governance. Quality of governance is mostly undermined by the corruption especially in the area of personnel recruitment and promotion. First thing that we need to do is to break the trend of job nepotism, cronyism and corruption in general. If we can do that, we can actually improve the quality of public service, productivity of the civil servants and efficient use of public budgets. If these things are properly put in place, we can actually achieve the pillar of Good Governance and with the Good Governance in place, anything is achievable. Further, as His Majesty stated, our attitude is all that matters and I am of a view that there is a serious need to improve in the attitude of both our Public servants and corporate workers because if their attitude is not right, nothing will be right. Therefore, let’s all make this pledge on this auspicious day that we shall never involve in any corrupt practices be it in recruitment of human resource personnel, or in using the Government funds. Let’s all put our national interest before our personal benefit while we must strive to watch our attitude during our discharge of public duty. Finally, on this auspicious day, I would like to assure our great Fourth that our nation is in the right hand. I have had few audiences with your son, our present King and I have no doubt that Your Majesty has bestowed upon our King all your peerless leadership traits. His Majesty himself has claimed that the King like the great Fourth has never been born before and shall never be born again. However, with my experiences under His Majesty’s reign over last nine years, our King has emanated parallel leadership traits of your Majesty. Thank you our great Fourth for the most priceless gift in the form of our present King to the people of Bhutan, who will definitely guide our country from strength to strength and ensure perpetual peace and prosperity while our national esprit de corps shall always remain intact. On this auspicious day, I make my pledge to serve your Prince, my King, with unflinching dedication and loyalty. I had an honor to join my first job when his Majesty became the Fifth King in 2006. As His Majesty marks his 9th year of reign, I take pride to celebrate my 9th year of service to the Tsa-wa-sum. If I continue to serve as civil servant, I make my pledge that I shall discharge my duty with utmost sincerity and integrity. If I join politics, I make my pledge that I shall never politicize our national interest. I shall always put my King and the country before my Party or personal agenda while general welfare of the people of Bhutan shall always be my priority. If I become a businessman, I make my pledge that I shall never involve in any business that would undermine the security of our sovereign country. I would always put forefront my national interest before my material benefits. If I become a scholar or researcher, I make my pledge that I shall continue to advocate Majesty’s profound concept of GNH and I would strive to share with other scholars so that it can bear global fruits in many years down the lane. Above all, I make my pledge that I shall always be a loyal subject of my King and conscientious citizen of Bhutan ensuring that my every action and thought is watched closely so that at the terminal end of my life, I shall have a reason to smile and feel proud for the life that I have lived in the best interest of my King, country and my own self. Long live our Kings and May Bhutan and her People Continue to be blessed under the benevolent rule of their Majesties in many years to come. Palden Drukpa Lha Gaylo! Author: Kuenden Valiant Source: Every View Counts