Incoming HK Chief Executive's trust deficit accelerates

Can Hong Kong citizens trust him?

CY Leung apologises for illegal structures

Wealthy property surveyor Leung Chun-ying is due to take office, mired in controversy, as Hong Kong’s next chief executive on July 1.  


The Chinese-language Ming Pao Daily reported last week that Leung’s residence on Victoria Peak, the lofty enclave for the rich, powerful and famous, featured an illegal glass canopy extension. That caused Buildings Department inspectors to check more closely, tallying five more instances of illegal structures on the property.  


Extensions to property in Hong Kong are a big deal, partly because rapacious landlords erect them on the top of their buildings for extra revenue. They are often illegal, unsafe, unsanitary and occasionally downright dangerous. 

The campaign of Henry Tang Ying-yen, Leung’s main rival for the chief executive job, collapsed when it was discovered he had a 2,400 square foot illegal basement under his Kowloon Tong house. Tang first denied it, then blamed his wife for building it. CY Leung had publicly declared during the campaigning that he had no illegal structures at his home.

Conducting a media pack through his HK$500 million residence, Leung explained that he bought the twin property 10 years ago and had an ‘authorized person’ inspect it for compliance with buildings regulations. He promised to rectify the infringements immediately. 

Albert Ho Chun-yan, Democratic Party chairman and the third man on the CE ballot in March, was incensed and will seek a judicial review or court petition to nullify the results of the small-circle CE election. “We are taking this matter to court because Hong Kong people need a credible chief executive” declared Albert who participated in the election to challenge the legitimacy of the electoral college.

The media circus has hired cranes stationed outside CY Leung’s residence just as they did outside Henry Tang’s Kowloon Tong quarters in February. There is live TV coverage and commentary.

Leung talks the talk

“There is only one law for all in Hong Kong, rich or poor,” Leung stated on ‘Newsline,’ the ATV interview program hosted by Michael Chugani last Sunday. He made the comment in the context that the same rule should apply to himself and to the New Territories villagers who claim they should be exempt.

Leung has the ability to say the right things even when caught with his pants down. In politics that is a rare gift. Comparisons with the ‘Teflon president’ Bill Clinton, who could look people in the eye and lie with a straight face, are not amiss. 

Allegations of being a closet communist, of urging riot police action on the 2003 public rally against a draconian security bill, of taking instructions from the ‘united front’ plotters at the China Liaison Office and now of violating the buildings code, all seem to slide off without sticking. 

Leung rarely gets flustered in public. He takes it all in stride like a hardened politician. He will not be scuppered.  He puts on the long-suffering look of the misunderstood. Colleagues who have worked for decades with him have difficulty penetrating his inscrutable personality. Nobody really ‘knows’ him. The old establishment of senior civil servants, property tycoons and university academics have major reservations. 

Public trust is surprisingly absent for a man who diligently tours depressed neighborhoods, avoids hobnobbing with the tycoons and projects himself a champion of the poor. There is something about CY Leung which invokes deep-seated mistrust.

Leung has apologised three times within the past five days at the various forums and meetings his team has organised. His latest apology was “I am disappointed in myself over this incident. I have let down my friends and the public. I am sorry”.

Tardiness after Henry Tang fiasco?

What rankles about Leung’s illegal extension discovery is that Henry Tang was felled by extensive media disclosure of similar unauthorized structures over which Henry remained silent as his government declared it would demolish all such extensions. 

Tang was then second in command in the Donald Tsang administration. Henry typically stuck his wife with it. She is now the subject of Buildings Department and legal investigations.

Leung had plenty of warning and ample time to rectify his illegal structures away from public glare. Why did it need a report by Ming Pao Daily, the same paper which broke the Henry Tang story, for him to act? Was it gross negligence, poor judgment or arrogance?

As a property surveyor himself, CY Leung has even less excuse for being unaware of what contravenes building regulations. Questions are being asked about the professional advice he received. Some point to that as disturbing evidence of his inability to find competent advisors.

His choice of outsiders inexperienced in administration or policy-making, to head up several bureaus in the incoming government has raised eyebrows among independent and pro-Beijing legislators.

Democrats bay for resignation

Several pro-Beijing compatriots voiced their disappointment and displeasure at this unwelcome tarnishing of the incoming chief executive’s reputation. After the humiliation of Beijing’s first choice for chief executive, the compatriots were relieved to have Leung slide into position by default. He was embraced as one of them who made good on his own.

Tsang Yok-sing, president of the Legislative Council, characterized the illegal structures as “serious negligence” on a radio talk program but did not think it was a deliberate cover-up. 

Chan Yuen-han, head of the Federation of Trade Unions (FTU), demanded a full explanation. The FTU had cast its vote for Leung in the ‘small-circle’ election for the chief executive.

Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee, an unsuccessful contender for the CE nomination, declared “integrity matters for those running for public office, therefore the illegal structure row is a serious problem”.

The democrats predictably held a protest march calling for Leung’s resignation saying he is “morally bankrupt”.

Fast-track ploy defeated in Legco

The attempt to fast-track the incoming administration’s restructuring bill ahead of the 10 pending bills and 17 resolutions was defeated in Legco by one vote. Of the 54 legislators in the chamber, 27 voted for, 25 against. The motion needed 28 votes to be carried. The government was too casual in assuming it easily held the majority in Legco. Chief secretary Stephen Lam’s jaw dropped when the vote-count was announced.

The president abstained from voting to maintain his impartiality. Regina Ip abstained ‘on principle’. Two pro-government legislators were absent.

That unexpected setback means the full complement of three top officials, two deputy secretaries and 14 bureaus in Leung’s administrative revamp (which will cost the government HK$60 million more per annum), will not be in place July 1 when it takes office.

What is particularly embarrassing about this is that President Hu Jintau will be in Hong Kong on that date to commemorate 15 years of the resumption of Chinese sovereignty. It is an altogether inauspicious start for the new chief executive.

Security bill rears its ugly head

It is widely suspected that Beijing’s support for CY Leung in the CE election, after Henry Tang self-destructed, included an obligation to pass the reviled Article 23 security legislation during the next five-year term. CY Leung has denied that Article 23 is a priority for his administration.

CY's 689 votes at the CE election adds to Article 23?

In 2017 the chief executive is to be universally elected. Given Hong Kong’s instinctive suspicion of the real intent of Article 23, it is unlikely that any popularly elected leader can endorse it. If the security bill is not enacted during the next term, it will be near impossible to embed it in the statutes thereafter.

Many independent and pan-democratic legislators fear that Leung’s strongman leadership style, evidenced by his aggressive push for quick approval of his massive reorganization of the government machinery, will similarly railroad the Article 23 bill when he feels it opportune to do so.

After 180,000 Hong Kong residents turned up for the June 4 vigil in Victoria Park for the 1989 student massacre in Tiananmen and a mass march June 10 over the suspicious suicide of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang at a hospital in Hunan, the public mood is outrage at the Communist Party’s callous disregard for human rights.

Ambrose Lee Sin-kwong, the outgoing secretary for security, last week made the loony claim that Hong Kong people “owe the central government a constitutional responsibility” to enact the national security legislation. 

That sounded like Hong Kong should show its gratitude to Beijing for the right to exist, by passing a bad law designed not to defend national security but to allow government to curtail treasured rights of free expression, assembly and press, allow home raids without warrant and imprison journalists for disclosure of undefined ‘state secrets’. 

The Singapore Straits Times’ China correspondent Ching Cheong was jailed for three years in 2005 for disclosing ‘state secrets’ and spying for Taiwan. None of the allegations were proven. He was also the subject of a false smear campaign by the authorities for allegedly keeping a mistress. Ching Cheong was a vice editorial manager on the communist paper Wen Wei Pao in Hong Kong. He resigned in protest with 40 others after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. 

China already has responsibility for external defense and international relations under the Basic Law. Article 23 is not a vital defense against attack by foreign forces. It is to shackle internal challenges to the creeping pro-mainland takeover of Hong Kong’s legislature, governance, academic institutions, police and justice systems. 

James To Kun-sun, chairman of the Legco security panel and a democratic lawmaker, said Article 23 should not be voted on until Hong Kong moved to universal suffrage. When all legislators are elected by the people, they are unlikely to pass bad laws which undermine fundamental freedoms and human rights.

The worry now is whether Hong Kong’s new chief executive will connive with Beijing to remove the territory’s last remaining freedoms and rule of law. Can Hong Kong people trust Leung Chun-ying?

ENDS

Bhutan media policy detached from reality

Media, Democracy & GNH all seem suspended in make-believe. Time to get real.

What struck me most about Bhutan’s experiments with accelerated democracy and plural media is the romanticised idealism behind both. There is so much hope inspired by so much innocence. 

Gross National Happiness (GNH) is singularly Bhutan’s most successful international export and its defining global brand. It is the enveloping philosophy for balanced development of society and the environment, temporal goals and religion, tradition and modernity, group responsibility and individual freedoms. Almost all policy initiatives are framed by GNH contribution and impact. 

Social progress owes much to leaders who dare to dream of a better world for their people. When they are able to create the ground conditions to translate dreams to reality, magic happens. That is where the noble GNH aspirations crash into reality. The execution gap is the challenge for Bhutan in all aspects of its governance. In media policy that gap is particularly wide.

Media vital for democracy. Media is also a business

Plural media can add multiple perspectives to issues in the public domain. It can inform public debate. It can allow wide participation of citizens in evolving policy. Media is therefore considered a social good in progressive societies.

However, media is also a business which has to generate a surplus of trading profit over operating costs. Unless media is profitable it cannot survive. A core ingredient for media health is the amount of advertising revenue available.

In Bhutan 80% of annual advertising derives from government notices for tenders, announcements and job vacancies. There is no private sector to speak of apart from an oligarchy of privileged elites with national franchises. Sonam Kinga who serves as the deputy chairman of the National Council makes that point very well in his Blog (www.sonamkinga.bt).

There is a serious disconnect between the liberal issue of publishing licenses and the advertising available to support the proliferation of newspapers. 


In 2006 Kuensel (1965), Bhutan Times and Bhutan Observer were the newspapers published. Government sharing of advertising seemed sufficient for their survival.  They had a mission and reason to exist. 

The total number of press titles now stands at twelve! Unless they are mission-led, bringing distinct value and differentiation of content, twelve newspapers for Thimpu is overkill. Most First World economies can only support one or two newspapers in each city. Their capitals may be able to support three or four. 


How can twelve newspapers survive in Thimpu, a city of only 100,000 people?

An attempt by the administration to distribute advertising on independently measured criteria of audience reach was defeated by the players appealing to the Prime Minister to void it. A press industry willing to fuzz its way to joining the dole queue raises a lot of questions about motives, integrity and value for democracy. 


Is this the kind of press the government wants to encourage? Why? How can such a press demand transparency and accountability of anyone else?


The standard excuse for policy errors is “we are a young democracy”. That does not justify the reluctance to rectify an unsustainable situation which is damaging responsible press. 


Why is leadership absent in such a critical area of the democratic framework? The worst effect of this muddle is that serious press is penalised and disabled for new supplicants joining the queue for government advertising and political advertising for the 2013 elections.


No government wants to upset the fourth estate before an election. Disabling responsible press before an election can be counter-productive.

Investigative journalism & Right to Information (RTI) Bill

The dependence on government for commercial survival is not a healthy situation for investigative journalism. 


Departments which have the discretion to channel advertising placements will naturally tend to favour ‘friendly’ media. Newspapers will have to trade off investigative journalism for advertising revenues. That can only create a poodle press, not a watchdog for democracy.

It is not the business of independent media to be publicists or propagandists for government. State media is there for the purpose although if they overdo it they will lose credibility. The primary job of independent press is disclosure. “All else is advertising” declared Randolph Hearst, the media baron who built the largest newspaper chain in America mid-20th Century. “News is something someone does not want you to know”.

The government has still not tabled an RTI Bill for parliament to debate and pass into law. It is currently amending the original draft and there is some indication the administration hopes to table it before its term expires. Investigative journalism needs facts to work with beyond rumour, suspicion and conjecture.

Governments have secrets. Amendments to the Bill will seek to balance the public’s right to know with the administration’s need for cover. If parliament fails to pass an effective RTI Act, it could well become an election issue for 2013 – which will further sensitize the public and reduce trust in government. 

Press will be handicapped if routine requests for information are stalled. The hitherto supreme power of government and the civil service needs to adjust to a democratic landscape where plural press is being promoted as a social good – along with transparency and accountability of governance.

Media policy? Killing press is a bad start

The first and most urgent action required of the policy makers is to stop the killing. Quality press is being devastated by distributing the limited government advertising across all new license holders irrespective of audience reach. 


There seems to be much opportunism driving the fever to secure publishing licenses before the upcoming election. The unintended consequences of this government largesse are clear for all to see. It defeats the intent to promote a responsible and committed plural press.

ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations) measurement needs press to submit verifiable print and sales records to certify average net sales per issue. It needs the co-operation of the industry. 


Press with false sales claims will not want independent measurement. Established press will have the advantage of incumbency. So be it. The ABC is measured in six-month cycles and can be implemented for a coalition of the willing. When the new titles have the numbers to audit they can join the ABC process.

Alternatively, readerships can easily be measured through scientific surveys which yield far more information than net copy sales. IPSOS, Nielsen and TNS are global media research houses with proven methodologies for Net, TV and Hardcopy audiences. They can profile audiences of each channel and map media consumption habits without any input from the publications, websites or TV. 

Audience research can be implemented in Thimpu where 80% of all newspapers are sold, through strict international supervision and local university field teams by end-year, if funds are made available.

Why use Govt. advertising to subsidise press?

Government advertising should serve the purpose; using it as a disguised subsidy to the undeserving defeats the intent of government funds. It will make sense to separate government advertising from press subsidy. Call a subsidy a subsidy and administer it accordingly.

National coverage for government announcements, tender invitations and job vacancies are effectively served by State TV and Radio. Press is a capital city phenomenon and ineffective for national reach. Almost 70% of citizens are out of press reach. Government can place its advertising where it works best. Capital city press has value in reaching the civil service elite, professionals and the urban middle class.

A press subsidy fund should have clear performance criteria for all titles. It should be performance-linked. More importantly, the issuing of any more press licenses should be stopped. 


Measurement criteria should be objective and neutral. Those who meet the benchmarks can qualify to be subsidized annually. The quantum of subsidy can be pegged to measured readerships agreed through a government-industry consensus for sustainability.  That can be reviewed annually to adjust for inflation.

Advertising distribution beyond the press subsidy should follow objective guidelines and not serve to tame press through selective patronage. 


New publishers should have the funds to sustain without government advertising for at least 12 months so that they can qualify for press subsidy through ABC audits or readership surveys. Mere license approval should not entitle any publisher to join the dole queue. Press demanding government support without an audience is fraud.

New publishers cannot be subsidised at the expense of existing titles with proven audiences. If they do not have the start-up funds to sustain long enough to achieve audience certification, they should not be granted a license in the first place.

By stopping indiscriminate distribution of government funds to unproven press, a culling will happen naturally. A market in private media can develop thereafter for mergers and acquisitions to sort itself out without any more government intervention. 

What about ‘yellow journalism’ & factual errors?

If ‘yellow journalism’ is to be curbed, an independent body should monitor that. Press self-regulation is a self-serving arrangement that has failed miserably in Britain and the USA. 


Press is dangerous when it is free to pursue sales through cheap sensationalism, innuendo, sex scandals, titillation, gory crime and soft porn. The criminals cannot be allowed to police themselves. Their products do not serve society.

For errors of fact in reporting, an independent Press Ombudsman can be appointed with the power to investigate complaints and compel apologies to be printed by the offending publications. Press is notorious for not admitting factual errors. The damage inflicted through inaccurate reporting is real.

Centralize services to serve all media

Kuensel has news bureaux across the country. That can be converted into a national news agency for the benefit of all media without wasteful duplication. Cost recovery can be through annual subscription fees. It should be independently managed.

Bhutan newspapers are printed on expensive woodfree (WF) paper stock because they have no access to roll-fed newsprint presses. Commercial sheet-fed presses cannot handle newsprint. A centralized newspaper press can serve all titles and be better utilized. 


The cost of raw material (paper) can be reduced so that the cover price at which newspapers are sold can yield a surplus and contribute to revenues instead of adding deficits with each copy sold! It will also be much faster and allow later editorial-close deadlines. Economies of scale can be achieved by centralizing newspaper printing.


Government can contribute to these macro initiatives through a Govt-Industry partnership funding over a fixed time horizon. Similarly ‘in the cloud’ sophisticated digital publishing applications software can be accessed by all players to reach youth and remote locations via mobile and online delivery.


These are all macro-industry initiatives which benefit all players but are impossible for individual newspapers to implement on their own. Consultants with practical first-hand experience of these matters can be engaged to produce project assessments for government-industry partnership funding and implementation.


J-School, training & professional development


Is journalism a passion, a mission or a profession? Some of the most outstanding journalists today (and in media history) never attended J-school. J-schools are good at turning out academics. Great journalists are driven by a passion to serve society. Is politics a passion, a mission or a profession? Are great politicians turned out by political science courses?


In Bhutan’s context, unless the press sustainability issue is quickly addressed, a J-school institution will be a misdirection of effort, energy and investment. There will be no private media of any size to employ the output of the J-school. It will become another employment burden for State TV, Radio and Kuensel: Government all over again. (Kuensel is 51% owned by government).


What is the sustainable size of an independent media sector for a city population of 100,000 (Thimpu)? What are the HRD projections of annual employment in journalism and media management? What is the projected growth rate of media to be able to absorb J-school output over the next 10 years?


It will be far more effective to take promising journalists from existing media and attach them to leading Press, TV, Radio and Online sites around the region to observe, practise and learn skills which they can use to upgrade their publications in Bhutan. Exposure beyond Bhutan is vital.


Newly retired senior journalists from ASEAN, India and elsewhere can immediately add value onsite through daily training and skills enhancement on the job. J-schools are already well behind the curve on converging media platforms and new business models. Their textbooks are decades out of relevance.


Short term attachments of leading designers, production quality experts, marketing managers and circulation promotion talent can likewise upgrade the industry immediately. These are investments viable media can make without government intervention.


If commercially viable media is not enabled, there is little hope for press capacity to absorb J-school output. Is it responsible to generate graduates who cannot be employed? How healthy is that for democracy?


It will be far more useful to add media literacy, journalism and media management electives to BBA, BCom and MBA courses so that the graduates have a wider range of employment prospects and career options.
ENDS

New Mainland editor at SCMP chief censor for China?

Journalistic ethics questioned at SCMP
So why was Li Wangyang’s suicide not news?

“I don’t have to explain to you anything. I made the decision and I stand by it. If you don't like it, you know what to do". That was how SCMP's new Beijing editor Wang replied Alex Price, a sub-editor at the paper.

Wang Xiangwei
the new mandarin at SCMP

The ‘suicide’ of Tiananmen dissident Li Wangyang under suspicious circumstances in a Hunan hospital, was reported by the Post’s own China staff in its first edition. Editor Wang returned to the office between editions to reduce it to a ‘brief’ buried in the inside pages. Alex Price asked why? Now he fears for his job. Alex circulated the intimidating e-mail exchange to his colleagues in the newsroom and elsewhere.

Li Wangyang’s suicide came days after he spoke to a Hong Kong TV channel, recounting two decades of harsh imprisonment and torture which left his sight and hearing severely damaged. Hong Kong politicians, including York Chow, secretary for food and health, have questioned why a frail man who survived relentless torture for so long, would suddenly decide to hang himself - or even have the strength to do so.
Too many detainees in China's notoriously medieval political gulags have been 'suicided'. 


Many pro-Beijing comrades in Hong Kong have also uncharacteristically raised their voices asking for full investigation and disclosure. This is an election year in Hong Kong for expanded Legislative Council seats, due September 9.

Emotions in Hong Kong are running high on Beijing’s unrectified verdict on the Tiananmen students. The pro-Beijing parties fear there could be a backlash. There was a record turnout of 180,000 people for the June 4 anniversary vigil in Victoria Park. The march that erupted on June 10 after the suspicious suicide of Li Wangyang, vented more anger against the blatant disregard for human rights in China.

President Hu Jintau is due to visit Hong Kong on July 1 for the 15th anniversary of the handover. The minders at the Hong Kong & Macau Affairs Office and the China Liaison Office are nervous of demonstrations during that high-profile visit.

Xiangwei the final nail in SCMP coffin?

When Xiangwei, a Chinese Peoples Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) member, was appointed editor-in-chief of Hong Kong’s 110-year paper of record, many industry professionals had misgivings. The more optimistic hoped that the independent journalistic traditions at the century-old paper would prevail over political correctness.

Wang Xiangwei was invited to articulate his intentions for the paper at Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club in April this year. The audience was none the wiser for his talk but Xiangwei pledged to uphold journalistic standards of reporting ‘without fear or favour’. The spin was predictable.

He did say that two months was too short a time to judge his editorship and asked his FCC audience to invite him back in six months. They should. He has a lot to answer for which is depressing for journalism at one of Asia’s long admired English language newspapers.

The sorry journalism at the Straits Times in Singapore, the discredited mainstream media in Malaysia and Burma and the woefully provincial press in Manila, all explain why the SCMP is such a relief to read. For how much longer?

The hiccups which SCMP has gone through with the serial termination of political cartoonists and China reporters continue to reverberate. Is Wang Xiangwei the final nail on the coffin? The spin-doctors at the China Liaison Office (HQ for ‘united front’ activities) could not have wished for a more effective liaison.

More insightful China analysis

It is generally acknowledged that the SCMP’s China news coverage, commentary and analysis is consistently superior to any international newspaper. Is that due to Xiangwei’s access to the inner networks of the PRC government, party and academics?

One comment on the whistle-blowing news site Asia Sentinel from a Wen Yiduo stated:
“Wang Xiangwei makes a zero contribution to the China section, aside from assigning meaningless and stupid stories. Anything good that appears in the China pages is due to the many knowledgeable reporters who cover China. If anything Wang Xiangwei censors news or gets in the way”.

As a CPPCC member at the national level, Xiangwei would not be considered a security risk. He is not categorized as a dissident or Westernized liberal. The bosses in Beijing are quite relaxed about their man in power at the SCMP. His instinct on sensitive issues is ‘reliable’ as the Li Wangyang incident has shown.

After the other Hong Kong papers covered Li Wangyang’s suicide comprehensively, the SCMP joined the queue with strong features, editorials and commentary. Xiangwei obviously looks over his shoulder for cues before treading on sensitive issues.

Editor-in-Chief needs to be a leader too

What is emerging from the SCMP newsroom is that Wang Xiangwei lacks people skills, organizational ability and respect for time. He has been known to confirm appointments with his subordinates which then drift by for hours or days. He is dismissive of subordinates who query his edicts. He does not share his vision for the paper or articulate any clear editorial philosophy for his journalists. His news conference style is not participative.

Like a mandarin in office, he is imperious and aloof. In a creative environment of writers and analysts, that does not sit well. The lack of inspirational leadership in the newsroom is a damper for most who looked forward to the change from its last Singaporean editor-in-chief who served management in gutting the senior echelon.

More Beijing talent from Xiangwei’s network is being appointed to senior positions and Western journalists are feeling unwelcome.

The Malaysian trio who were brought in earlier have departed for a new era of Singaporean chiefs following the appointment of former Singapore foreign minister George Yeo as vice-chairman of Kerry Group (a unit of Kuok Group) from January this year. Kerry Group has a controlling interest in the SCMP.

Replacing western journalists and introducing security department officials into supervisory positions at the Straits Times is well known throughout the industry. The South China Morning Post will have the dubious benefit of this media muzzling expertise from its new advisers.
ENDS

Who's in charge after democracy in Bhutan?

Happiness Land struggles with new Democratic Order

Bhutan vaulted from a feudal monarchy into a parliamentary democracy in 2008. That followed a royal edict in 2006 by the Fourth Druk Gyalpo (Dragon King) declaring abdication in favour of his eldest son and mandating democratic elections in 2008.

King Jigme Khesar Namgyel and Queen Jetsun Pema

For a mountain people who revere their King and don national dress every day, this sudden devolution of power has been most unsettling. Who is The Boss now? No one seems to know. None dare claim the role either.

Fourth King Jigme Singye crowns
Fifth King Jigme Khesar Namgyel

The civil service has been left floundering between an elected parliament of newbies still unclear about their remit and a monarch who stepped back. 

While the civil service acted on orders of the monarch, it was beyond challenge. That certitude has evaporated. The demand for transparency and accountability plus a proliferation of newspapers, has put the powerful bureaucracy on the defensive. 

The new democratic dispensation allows elected representatives to criticise administrative shortcomings in open debate. The newspapers amplify that embarrassment. This is an entirely novel experience for civil servants. They feel insecure and unloved. 

The resulting reluctance to take action on many pressing issues across the spectrum of administration, is beginning to slow down and paralyse the system. 

Even routine queries from the press are parried by bureaucrats for fear of being blamed for giving the 'wrong' answer. The civil servants feel they have been left high and dry without any precedent to follow. There is a leadership vacuum.

While devolution of power to the masses has a Utopian ring about it, the reality is that 70% of Bhutanese society is agrarian. The issues which preoccupy them are elemental - tilling the very limited (9%) arable land, tending livestock and eking out a subsistence in barren mountain terrain with difficult logistics, poor communications and a freezing cold most of the year. 

The finer points of parliamentary democracy and a free press seem too far from their lives to matter much. All the democratic noise and fury plays out in the capital Thimpu, where about 100,000 of Bhutan's 725,000 population and all its 12 newspapers reside.

Gross National Happiness (GNH) excites the UN

      Prime Minister Jigmi Yoezer Thinley & Keynote Speaker
President Laura Chinchilla Miranda of Costa Rica at the UN

The Fourth King Jigme Singye Wangchuk is credited with musing about the need to re-define traditional GDP factors about 40 years ago, for a more inclusive matrix of social progress and well-being. That evolved over time into the Happiness Index introduced in 2005, for which Bhutan is now universally lauded.

The trashing of the capitalist narrative in the USA and Europe, climate change effects from abuse and depletion of Earth's limited resources plus anger at the "1%" has coalesced into a search for alternative development models which put people and the environment ahead of profit. Bhutan's GNH approach is becoming an interesting model for many more nations.

In July 2011 the General Assembly of the United Nations unanimously adopted Resolution 65/309 empowering the Kingdom of Bhutan to convene a high-level meeting in New York on GNH - at its 66th session in April 2012. 

Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley led the discussions which received wide international media coverage. That has given the tiny landlocked Himalayan Kingdom sandwiched between China and India, an outsize international profile. The Bhutanese leadership basks in that limelight with great pride.

Perhaps too much GNH distraction?

Western academics have turned Bhutan's GNH into a conference-tourism industry. There is talk of a Centre for GNH to be built in Bumthang - a 10-hour drive through twisting hairpin bends and bumpy stretches - to facilitate international studies and research about the concept. Every other month there is a forum, seminar or international dialogue about GNH. There is no shortage of academic pilgrims journeying to Bhutan to talk GNH to death.

What is most curious about GNH seminars is that the speakers tend to be foreigners who do not live in Bhutan. The Bhutanese wisely stay out of the lecture circuit. They listen attentively and smile.

At the top where it matters, there is considerable GNH-fatigue and frustration with the hard realities Bhutan must confront. The young king, the deputy chairman of the National Council and the leader of the opposition are all railing for effective action to fix all the obvious problems.

India bankrolls the Bhutan economy, supplies most of its imports, builds its infrastructure of bridges and roads and provides unskilled labour for construction. Most of Bhutan's expatriate teaching faculty for schools and colleges are also recruited from India.

All of that has led to a 'rupee crunch' which saw the Ngultrum, previously accepted at par with the Indian rupee, being discounted by Indian Banks and traders. Now that has turned into a rigid demand for rupees only. Petty border trade is grinding to a halt with severe disruption to small business.

Bhutan has run out of rupee reserves to pay for its one-sided Indian trade. Emergency loans from India and conversion of Bhutan's US$ reserves into rupees is propping up the situation for the moment.

Panic measures by the Monetary Authority to stop loans and slow down rupee transactions fail to address the fundamental problem of the utter imbalance of Bhutan-India trade flows. It is one-way: Indian goods and services imported into Bhutan which have to be paid for in rupees. Bhutan has little to export to India other than hydroelectric power (which is financed, built and traded by Indian energy companies).

No thriving private sector to drive growth?

Entrepreneurial energy to drive a private sector to promote import-substitution and to generate export earnings is needed. Some have blamed excessive regulatory hurdles and difficult bank credit for the lack of a domestic private sector.

The agricultural sector is disorganized, handicapped by lack of silos to store rice, grain, vegetables and fruit and has to cope with long supply-chains across difficult mountain roads to get produce to market. 

Rural-urban migration depletes the availability of educated youth to organize the agrarian economy. University students all aspire to join the civil service for the prestige it still carries plus the job security and pension it entails.

The capacity for government to absorb university graduates annually is running out. Already 75% of the government's operating budget goes to pay salaries to its civil service. 

There is 9% youth unemployment and rising crime in Thimpu from drug and booze addiction compounded by undisciplined low-level imported labour.

Politicians and newspapers are gearing up for the second general election due 2013. Unless elected representatives in parliament can lead a bottom-up, self-sufficiency revolution across Bhutan to deliver a 'democracy-dividend', time is running out rapidly for Happiness Land. 

ENDS