ABSTRACT
The Election Commission of Bhutan (ECB) is the primary state agency responsible for conducting elections. When it was mandated to conduct the elections in 2008, there were no election-related laws and institutions in place. In this chapter, I discuss how ECB went about drafting laws, creating institutions and initiating an electoral process to implement its mandate. But I ask an inconvenient question: Has ECB truly remained apolitical and neutral in the conduct of elections? I argue that ECB has often overstepped its mandate and gone beyond the provisions of electoral laws and the Constitution. This happened because it imagines itself to be the “guardian of democracy” besides the mandate of conducting free and fair elections. In this self-styled position as the guardian of democracy, it has taken decisions or articulated positions that raised important legal questions in the process. In this chapter, ECB is shown sometimes as behaving completely rationally in compliance to the laws. Sometimes, it acts rather “magically” by re-interpreting the very laws it drafted in the middle of electoral games. The ambivalence of the modern state that oscillates between rational and irrational or magical modes is hence seen expressed in some of the actions and decisions ECB took.
