(TibetanReview.net, May23’21) – The Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE) has said May 22 that the holding of its postponed May 24 additional session was no longer tenable due to hopeless lack of quorum. At least 30 of the TPiE’s strength of 45 members must attend the meeting to fulfil the quorum requirement.
Nothing has been going right for the TPiE as it followed its illegal sacking of the entire panel of justice commissioners of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission (TSJC) on May 25 with a series of other inevitably illegal moves to deal with its devastating fallouts.
TPiE has said that 21 of its members had explicitly said they would not, or would not be able to, attend the session, while three others had failed to confirm their participation.
In any case, the decision to hold the meeting was controversial as it was not called in keeping with the requirements prescribed for the same; besides, it was impermissible under the Covid-19 curfew rules of the State government.
Also, the main purpose of holding the meeting had become defunct. The meeting was meant to elect a chief justice commissioner and two other justice commissioners to the TSJC after the TPiE illegally sacked all three of them during its last regular session on May 25.
But a committee constituted to nominate candidates for the election failed to come up with the requisite minimum of a total of six candidates.
It now appears to have become impossible for the newly election Sikyong Penpa Tsering to be sworn in on May 26 as there is no chief justice commissioner to administer the oath unless there is a new development to make it possible.
Members who were vociferous in insisting that they did nothing wrong in illegally sacking the justice commissioners – thereby toppling the TSJC itself – have maintained that the Tibetan apex court was still very much there, pointing to the building which housed it to prove their point.
Unfortunately, this building can never administer oath to the newly elected Sikyong.
