The Tibetan government-in-exile in Dharamsala, India, completed the handover ceremony between the old and new political leaders on May 27. The elected chief of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), Bipa Tsering, took office in accordance with the rituals of Tibetan secularism and proposed a “middle way” to restart dialogue with the Chinese government and facilitate the Dalai Lama’s visit to China. The Dalai Lama congratulated the Tibetans via video and said: Tibetans in Tibet have no freedom under Chinese rule, while Tibetans in exile have achieved true democracy and have brought Tibetan Buddhism to life.
The Central Secretary of Tibetan Administration serves a five-year term. The former Speaker of the Tibetan People’s Assembly, Bainpa Tsering, was elected with 34,324 votes, or about 54 percent of the vote. Kelsang Dorji, the former representative of the exile government in North America, received 28907 votes, with nearly 46 percent of the votes, and the gap between the two was just over 5,000 votes, the smallest ever in the election results, making the competition very fierce.
According to the Voice of Tibet, the Central Tibetan Administration has set up more than 50 local election committees and hundreds of polling places in 26 countries for this election. A total of 82,969 voters registered for the general election pre-election, and a total of 83,080 voters registered for the official election, of which 63,991 voted for the secretary-general, a record high voter turnout of 77 percent.
The Election Affairs Department of the Central Tibetan Administration is expected to hold a press conference this Friday to officially announce the list of elected members of the 16th Cabinet of the Central Tibetan Administration and the 17th Tibetan People’s Assembly.
According to Radio Free Asia, the 27th government handover ceremony aired a video message from the 14th Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who recalled that the democracy that he and his supporters began to establish and promote in India at the beginning of his exile in 1959 and in the 1960s, has come to maturity. This is not a show democracy, but a democracy in name only. The Chinese Communist government has always criticized the Tibetan government as a feudal serfdom, but Tibetans in exile have directly elected their own leaders and achieved true democracy. On the contrary, Tibetans under the Chinese Communist Party have no freedom to speak of and are continuously suppressed.
The Dalai Lama said that the international situation has changed greatly and that his “middle way” policy can solve the Tibetan issue. He called on the Chinese government to abide by its commitment to grant Tibet genuine autonomy under the constitutional framework of the People’s Republic of China. If the Chinese government slowly opens up, I believe that the “middle way” is definitely a win-win policy.
In his speech, Bemba Tsering, the new Secretary of the Tibetan government-in-exile, thanked the United States and Taiwan for their congratulatory messages to him. This is the first time the U.S. State Department has sent an official congratulatory message to the Tibetan government-in-exile, a reflection of the new U.S. policy toward Tibet.
In 2020, the U.S. Congress passed the U.S. Pro-Tibet Act, which recognizes the legitimacy of the Tibetan administrative center, and the democratically elected Tibetan government-in-exile Secretary of State was able to be officially invited to visit the U.S. State Department and the White House.
Taiwan was the second government to congratulate the Central Tibetan Administration.
In his speech, the new Tibetan government-in-exile, Bemba Tsering, also said that his first priority after taking office is to resolve the Tibetan issue and that he hopes to become a model for international conflict resolution by holding peace talks with China through the “middle way” policy. The Dalai Lama has expressed his willingness to visit China, and he will use all his resources to support and do his best to facilitate this during his term of office. Until the Tibetan issue is resolved, he will intensify his efforts to promote legitimate demands at the international level and expose the Chinese Communist Party’s policy of brutal suppression of Tibetans in Tibet. The Central Tibetan Administration will also focus its efforts on international relations, and internally strengthen the current “separation of powers” system of democracy and justice, and work to eliminate the confrontation caused by the elections.
Bipa Tsering was born in India, worked as a farmer and laborer in his family, and was elected to two terms as Speaker of Parliament and as a representative to the United States. After his election, he said, “His Holiness the Dalai Lama has established a democratic system, and only Tibetans in exile can enjoy the results of this election, so who wins and who loses need not be too happy or too painful, as long as Tibetans vote together to elect a very good ruler to power. The time when Tibetans will be most happy is when Sino-Tibetan relations are really resolved and Tibetans inside and outside the country can be reunited and live together.
Various circles believe that the challenge facing Bainpa Tsering will be how to unite Tibetans internally, restart the Sino-Tibetan peace talks, and the issue of the Dalai Lama’s reincarnation.
Lobsang Senghor, who stepped down from his post after two decades as secretary-general of the Tibetan government-in-exile, noted in his farewell speech on the 26th that he had witnessed China’s growing power and belligerence over the past decade and had refused to engage in any discussions on human rights and democracy. In his official visits to various countries, he experienced first-hand the impact of Chinese government pressure on these governments.
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