TIBET: Law scholar elected prime minister in exile

Lobsang Sangay, a Harvard University law academic, has been elected the third Kalon Tripa or Tibetan prime minister in exile by Tibetans around the world, it was announced officially on Wednesday in Dharamsala, India, the seat of the Tibetan exile parliament. Sangay's doctoral thesis on exile politics provides some clues to his political awakening, according to his former professors at Harvard.

Sangay, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, became the first Tibetan to earn a doctorate at the school with a dissertation that examined exile politics, using Tibet's government in exile as a case study.

Henry Steiner, emeritus professor at Harvard Law School who supervised the doctoral thesis, said: "Over this period of time with the doctorate, Lobsang developed a very impressive scholarly knowledge of theory, concepts, history and the many different contemporary manifestations of political democracy.

"He has woven these into a close set of proposals involving a close useful description of a government in exile and ways in which it could and indeed, has developed, in some of the fundamentals of a democratic movement, including of course through elections."

Sangay notably described the election held last weekend as a moral victory.

"I believe the successful conduct of the recent Tibetan Kalon Tripa and parliamentary elections and the active participation of the Tibetans in the elections is a huge moral victory. The Chinese government and leadership for all its might still lack the courage to allow Tibetans in Tibet the right to freely elect their leaders," Sangay told a newspaper in India shortly after the election result was announced.

Sangay added: "Beijing has always criticised our democratic progress in exile and has accused His Holiness of continuing to lead a feudal theocratic society. Now that all political and administrative power is in the process of being transferred to elected Tibetan representatives, it will be much harder for China to make that criticism."

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said earlier this year he was retiring from his political role in the exile government, confining himself to being the religious head of Tibetan Buddhism.

"The Tibetan movement and community are in the middle of some momentous changes," Sangay said after the election, which saw him garner 55% of the 50,000 votes from Tibetans around the world. "Along with the generational shift in Tibetan political leadership, we also have to deal with His Holiness' [the Dalai Lama's] decision to devolve all political authority to elected Tibetan representatives."

Sangay said his priority areas were enhancing investment in education for Tibetans, elevating the global importance of Tibet's environment and improving the economic well-being of Tibetans.

"We will make maximum efforts to ensure that all Tibetans have access to high quality modern education, but one that is also anchored in our culture and spirituality. We want to create pathways for Tibetans to become successful professionals in a wide range of fields," he told the Deccan Herald newspaper.

"Tibetan's have been given a raw deal within China," Sangay told University World News in an interview in November, just after being accepted as a candidate for the Kalon Tripa elections.

"Tibetans are entering in a global economy so they need a different kind of education than they are getting under China's policies on minorities," he said.

At Harvard, Sangay organised major conferences on Tibet between Chinese and Tibetan scholars, including an unprecedented meeting between 35 mainland Chinese scholars and the Dalai Lama in 2003 and with 100 Chinese scholars in May 2009, which Sangay said was characterised by "intensive but civil discussion".

Sangay hopes to facilitate at least one or two similar conferences a year in the near future.

"It's double track diplomacy," he told a Harvard interviewer. "While you have the official dialogue, you also need a parallel forum where Chinese officials and scholars can meet with Tibetans to test out ideas and have a fair discussion.

"It's essential to keep the dialogue going."

University World News interview with Sangay

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