And Then There Were None
The next lot to represent us in the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies will be chosen without an election. While this procedure may satisfy the various groups who created it, one must not forget that the whole point of having a parliamentary institution is lost in the process. Neither can those who were afraid of receiving an unfair deal now afford to lay back in the safe knowledge that it is all in the capable hands of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama does not have a personal knowledge of the good and bad points of all 100,000 Tibetans in exile. He must at least to some extent depend on suggestions and recommendations from his close advisors. So, in effect, the representatives of the people will be chosen not by their consitituents but by some of those already in positions of power. If the Dalai Lama’s approval of the chosen candidates were sufficient to satisfy them, there was no need for any change to begin with: such approval was also given to candidates chosen in the previously tried forms of selection.
Thus all that the new procedure has achieved is sacrifice of the process of democratic election itself. When the Dalai Lama instructed us to try out this system, he must have thought it to be a more desirable system than the one that previously existed in our country. Now, on one hand, we are still saying he knows what is best for us; while, on the other, we are effectively—albiet humbly—suggesting he could be wrong there.
I, for one, still fail to see what significant gains or losses any section of us stand to experience by virtue of a particular person’s being elected or not elected to the Assembly. It is all a practice runs for the day when we once again have something we can call our own. So, instead of letting petty differences encumber us, why not try to practise this system properly? The more important thing, in my mind, that the Tibetan parliamentarians can do is to learn what exactly is a parliament all about. Tibetans have may friends among Indian members of parliament, both former and active. As soon as a new Assembly is sworn in such persons can be invited to give an informal talk to them (with the help of competent interpreters). Experts from Western democracies can also be invited to give them added food for though. We can carry on learning through the process of trial and error—but we should do so within the institutional framework, and not by, for all practical purposes, abolishing it.
The next lot to represent us in the Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies will be chosen without an election. While this procedure may satisfy the various groups who created it, one must not forget that the whole point of having a parliamentary institution is lost in the process. Neither can those who were afraid of receiving an unfair deal now afford to lay back in the safe knowledge that it is all in the capable hands of the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama does not have a personal knowledge of the good and bad points of all 100,000 Tibetans in exile. He must at least to some extent depend on suggestions and recommendations from his close advisors. So, in effect, the representatives of the people will be chosen not by their consitituents but by some of those already in positions of power. If the Dalai Lama’s approval of the chosen candidates were sufficient to satisfy them, there was no need for any change to begin with: such approval was also given to candidates chosen in the previously tried forms of selection.
Thus all that the new procedure has achieved is sacrifice of the process of democratic election itself. When the Dalai Lama instructed us to try out this system, he must have thought it to be a more desirable system than the one that previously existed in our country. Now, on one hand, we are still saying he knows what is best for us; while, on the other, we are effectively—albiet humbly—suggesting he could be wrong there.
I, for one, still fail to see what significant gains or losses any section of us stand to experience by virtue of a particular person’s being elected or not elected to the Assembly. It is all a practice runs for the day when we once again have something we can call our own. So, instead of letting petty differences encumber us, why not try to practise this system properly? The more important thing, in my mind, that the Tibetan parliamentarians can do is to learn what exactly is a parliament all about. Tibetans have may friends among Indian members of parliament, both former and active. As soon as a new Assembly is sworn in such persons can be invited to give an informal talk to them (with the help of competent interpreters). Experts from Western democracies can also be invited to give them added food for though. We can carry on learning through the process of trial and error—but we should do so within the institutional framework, and not by, for all practical purposes, abolishing it.
posted by editorla at
9:26 PM
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