Lobsang Sangay: What China Could Learn from the Dalai Lama
The writer, until recently a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, will assume the post of Kalon Tripa on Aug. 8.
Wednesday, on his 76th birthday, His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be honored at Verizon Center by 11,000 people, including Arun Gandhi and Martin Luther King III, the grandson and son of the two stalwarts of nonviolence.
This spring, when people put their lives on the line for democracy during the Jasmine Revolution, with Col. Moammar Gaddafi still shedding blood to hold on to power in Libya, and despite impassioned appeals by Tibetans, the Dalai Lama devolved all his political power to democratically elected Tibetan leaders. That means that the Dalai Lama gave up his constitutional power to dismiss the Tibetan parliament, judiciary and executive; to sign or veto bills; to summon emergency meetings; and to appoint representatives and envoys abroad..
After Tibet was occupied, the Dalai Lama arrived in India in 1959. His vision of a secular democratic society began to be realized. In 1960, at the behest of the then-25-year-old Dalai Lama, Tibetans elected their first parliament; soon, Tibetan women were elected as representatives. Tibet’s first democratic constitution, adopted in 1963, included, at his insistence, a provision to allow for the impeachment of the Dalai Lama.
In 1991, amid the “Third Wave” of democracy, the Tibetan parliament was expanded and empowered to elect the cabinet, which had been the prerogative of the Dalai Lama as the head of state....