Exiled Tibetans re-elect leader

DHARAMSALA: Tibetans in exile have re-elected a Harvard-educated lawyer as their political leader to spearhead a campaign to press China to grant Tibet autonomy, the Tibetan government-in-exile said yesterday.

Lobsang Sangay ( pix), who has led the 150,000-odd Tibetan diaspora since 2011 when the Dalai Lama relinquished his political power, won 57% of the almost 60,000 votes cast, the electoral commission announced in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala, where the administration is based.

The Dalai Lama, 81, has sought to build a democratic system of government for exiled Tibetans that is strong enough to hold the community together and negotiate with China after his death.

Question marks over what happens when the spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Laureate dies, amid competing assertions over who should succeed him, have reinforced Tibetans’ need for a leader endowed with democratic legitimacy.

Tibetan Buddhism holds that the soul of a senior lama is reincarnated in the body of a child after he dies. China says it must sign off on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising.

“I voted for him because of his educated background,” said Choezin, a 53-year-old crimsonrobed monk who fled Tibet in 1985 to settle in Dharamsala.

“His Holiness wants somebody who can continue the work he has done. He has said Sangay is the right man.”

Sangay will head the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) for five years.

No country recognises the CTA and China has declined to talk to it. – Reuters