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Dalai Lama pleads with Tibetan MPs to let him step down

14 March 2011 19:09 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. The Dalai Lama issued a plea to Tibetan MPs exiled in India to accept his decision to stand down as their political figurehead and elect a new leader, APA reports quoting â€œThe Telegraphâ€.
The 75 year-old monk, who has lead the struggle for Tibetan autonomy since he fled China’s suppression of the 1959 uprising, had announced his desire to stand down last week.
On Monday a letter was read out in the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, explaining his decision and asking MPs to accept it.
"If we have to remain in exile for several more decades, a time will inevitably come when I will no longer be able to provide leadership.
Therefore, it is necessary that we establish a sound system of governance while I remain able and healthy, in order that the exiled Tibetan administration can become self-reliant rather than being dependent on the Dalai Lama," he said.
Since his flight from Chinese-controlled Tibet, the Dalai Lama has raised the profile of the Tibetan cause, popularised Buddhism in the West, and won many influential supporters.
Now he fears a political vacuum following his death and Chinese interference in the discovery of a ’reincarnated Dalai Lama’ may harm the Tibetan movement. He has told Indian officials he favours Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 25 year old Karmapa Lama, head of another powerful Buddhist sect, to succeed him as spiritual figurehead.
China has accused the Dalai Lama of playing ’tricks’ with his announcement but the prime minister of the Tibetan government in Exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, said he was determined to retire. "This decision of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is final. There is no going back," he said.