Dalai Lama to step down as Tibet’s leader to ‘devolve power’
By devolving his powers, the Dalai Lama would give the prime minister greater clout as the region seeks autonomy from China.
Tibetans will vote for a new prime minister this month, with the elections seen as ushering in a generation of younger, secular leaders and strengthening the movement’s global standing.
“As early as the 1960s, I have repeatedly stressed that Tibetans need a leader, elected freely by the Tibetan people, to whom I can devolve power,” the Dalai Lama said in his annual speech marking 52 years since he fled Tibet after a failed uprising against the Chinese.
“Now, we have clearly reached the time to put this into effect,” he told a subdued crowd of 2,000 monks and Tibetans.
The Dalai Lama, whose announcement was widely expected, will remain Tibet’s spiritual leader and continue to advocate “meaningful autonomy” for Tibet from the northern Indian town of Dharamsala, where he has lived in exile since 1959.
The prime minister of the Tibetan government-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said it was not clear if the parliament would accept the Dalai Lama’s resignation and warned of a constitutional deadlock.
China, which regards the Dalai Lama as a dangerous separatist responsible for stirring unrest in Tibet, denounced his resignation as a “trick”.
“The Dalai Lama uses religion as a disguise and he is a political exile who has been carrying out separatist activities for a long time,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu.
“For years he has been expressing his intention to retire. We think these are tricks to deceive the international community.”
By divesting his political powers, he has made it more difficult for China to influence the course of the independence movement after his death, analysts say.
The Chinese government says it has to approve all reincarnations of living Buddhas, or senior religious figures in Tibetan Buddhism. It also says China has to sign off on the choosing of the next Dalai Lama.
Tibetans fear that China will use the thorny issue of the Dalai Lama’s succession to split the movement, with one new Lama named by the exiles and one by China after his death. A new Dalai Lama would need decades before they could lead the movement.
On Monday, China insisted the Dalai Lama had no right to choose his successor, but must follow the historical and religious tradition of reincarnation.
“There is a lot of talk that the Chinese are waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, thinking that without him the movement will stall,” said Kanwal Sibal, former Indian foreign secretary.
“By democratising the movement, he is trying to steer Tibet’s leadership in a direction that will make it difficult for the Chinese to dictate the dialogue.”
Analysts say he is still likely to wield a large amount of power over the parliament-in-exile due to his global renown and the devotion of ordinary Tibetans.
