Resigned on moral ground : MP Lobsang Choejor

DHARAMSALA, 8 April: MP Lobsang Choejor announced today that he has resigned from the parliament on “moral grounds” following former Kalon Tripa Prof Samdhong Rinpoche’s take on the parliament’s impeachment of the three Justice Commissioners of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission(TSJC).

“Today as my teacher Prof Samdhong Rinpoche has concurred that the TSJC does have the powers to act suo moto in accordance with the provisions of the Article 67 of the  Charter of Tibetans in Exile and owing to my misunderstanding of the Article 59 and the likes, I offer my sincere apology to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Prof Samdhong Rinpoche and the Tibetan general public and resigned from the parliament,” MP Lobsang Choejor said.

The MP maintains in his formal mea culpa that from the begging to the end, throughout the entire process he has been doing his best to do his duty as a legislature without an iota of ulterior motive.

In Sept last year, the TSJC took suo moto cognizance and summoned the Tibetan MP to explain as to why he was not making a mockery of the court over his article that criticised the apex court’s ruling that declared the Standing Committee of the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile’s(TPIE) decision to postpone the 16th TPIE’s September session a deliberate act of ignoring the mandate of the Charter of Tibetans in Exile.

Prof Samdhong Rinpoche who also happens to be a member of the Drafting Committee of the Charter for Tibetans-in-Exile today described the situation of TSJC without justices after their removal as a “constitutional breakdown” of the Tibetan democracy in a VOT interview where he shared his take on the fundamental issues on which the two-pillar differs strictly as an individual representing himself and expressing his own views with no association to any organisation or any establishment.

Rinpoche states in the interview that he decided to speak over the matter as after many of his friends and aides urged him to do so and moreover as his name was cited and quoted during the parliament proceedings which he says warrants a clarification from him as it will be recorded in the history.

The former Kalon Tripa states in the interview that the legislature does not have the power to remove all the three justices at the same time from their offices and that for the impeachment of any one of them, a review committee must be formed. And this Rinpoche says become clear if we read Article 63 and 54 together.

Rinpoche says that though we can not call the Charter of Tibetans in Exile our constitution due to some circumstances, it indeed is the constitution of  Tibetans in Exile.

We don’t have a “Definition of the word” for our Charter and to properly understand it we must read and understand it in its entirety as many of the Articles are correlated.

On his take on Clause (IV), Article (63) of the Charter of Tibetans in exile that the 16th TPIE used to impeach the justices, Rinpoche is of the opinion that the parliament is “half right”  as he reasoned at the unavailability of a committee as mandated by Article 54.

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