ZURICH, Switzerland - Last week, the executive branch of the Tibetan government
in exile (The Kashag) issued a statement pressing all Tibetans to place their
democratic duty before their democratic rights. Such statements are typical
punctuation points in the passages of Tibetan-style democracy.
The statement came on "Democracy Day", September 2. The Tibetan government in
exile instituted this day to encourage Tibetans living outside Tibet to take an
interest in the process of democratization that the Dalai Lama has been
championing for much of his life in exile. He considers it an essential
component of a modern nation that was sorely lacking in Tibet before occupation
by the People's Republic of China in the 1950s.
"The Kashag would like to emphatically state that all Tibetans
should - at this very critical and crucial period - give more importance to
their democratic duties than rights; that they should give more importance to
the national and community's benefits than individual's and organization's; and
that they should, in order to challenge the forces of division, strive towards
combining their collective energies," The Kashag said.
The rationale behind the Kashag's statement matches the underlying reason of
many of the oddities of the Tibetan mode of democracy: unity above all. Unity
first has meant that the government in exile has remained a non-party system.
The deputies of the Kashag are elected on a regional, geographical and
religious basis.
Efforts to foster a civil society have been instigated almost entirely by the
Dalai Lama. The first sprouting of a political party was set up when he
encouraged it. Constitutional reforms peeling back his personal (even divine)
powers were pushed through at his insistence. The reform that would allow for
the impeachment of a Dalai Lama went through only at his insistence.
Democratization has, until very recently, been coming almost exclusively from
above.
Tibet's often romanticized image as an idyllic land of Buddhist brotherhood
belies the regional, religious and political rifts that exist among its
populace and, consequently, the populace in exile. The diaspora today is
scattered across the world with vague concentrations in North America and
Europe. Even the majority in India and Nepal are quite geographically removed
from each other.
Nation-states all over the world have shouldered internal differences and lived
to tell the tale as multi-party democracies. The government of Spain would, no
doubt, provoke some strange reactions by instructing its voters to put their
duty to the nation-state above their democratic rights. Tibet is unique because
its nation-building has taken place largely in exile. The governing systems in
pre-1950 Tibet were neither pervasive nor particularly effective and a sense of
Tibetan national identity was, by all accounts, noticeably lacking.
Of course accusations have sprung up from China and the rest of the world that
the democratization process is a means of seeking Western sympathy and making
out like the good guys. Yet this explanation hardly accounts for how pervasive
and successful the process has been.
Tibet was largely feudal and apolitical in 1950. Today, the absence of
political parties has seen the rise of grassroots pressure groups such as Youth
for Better MPs. There is a greater desire for multi-party democracy among the
community in exile than is evident in many well-established democracies, as
evidenced by the comments of many Kashag deputies.
The government in exile provides as much of the infrastructure of government as
possible. There are limits to what an exile judiciary can do, for example, but
within those limits the judiciary looks remarkably democratic. The departments
of education and international relations have been notably successful in their
missions. And Prime Minister Samdhong Rinpoche's 2007 Democracy Day response to
accusations that certain non-governmental organization's enjoy tacit government
support sounded oddly, well, democratic. It seems that he takes the "non" in
non-government organization rather seriously and believes that they, and
society in general, should too.
From a distance the whole thing looks like an experiment. Tibet has lacked a
political class and what might be called civil society, so a geographically
scattered diaspora is even less likely to succeed in remaining politically
united. Phurbu Thinley, however, reported in Phayul on Democracy Day that the
2001 elections saw Tibetans in 27 countries voting and the enthusiasm for the
democratic process was gradually expanding.
Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama remains an entirely unelected head of state and there
are concerns that efforts to inform the electorate about their local candidates
are under-funded. There remains great resistance to any efforts to dismantle
the Dalai Lama's temporal powers.
In the long term there may be further problems also. Political thinker Wang
Lixiong has argued that should the current system ever be transposed to an
autonomous Tibet some day it will problematically exclude non-Tibetan
minorities.
The Han Chinese can hardly be called a minority in Tibet any more. Without a
dramatic shift in current voter outlook, religious control of politics also
seems inevitable. Most seriously, Wang Lixiong points out, under the kind of
democracy supported by the Dalai Lama, forces demanding independence would
quickly rise to prominence, which is a sure reason for China to be reticent
about accommodating this style of autonomy in Tibet.
The story of the exiles' democratization process is largely a successful one.
They have established the networks of government effectively, rallied some
interest in democracy as a process and ratified a constitution. Nevertheless,
the experiment needs refining if it is to be representative in exile. To
convince the Chinese government of its viability for Tibet itself, it may need
to be drastically overhauled.
Denis Burke is a writer and editor based in Amsterdam where he recently
completed research on Chinese-Tibetan affairs in the 21st Century.
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