The 16th Tibetan Parliament-in-exile during its one-day session to pass the budget for the fiscal year 2020-21, in Dharamshala, India, on 17 March 2020. Tibet Sun/Contributor
Tibet Sun Online News
ON THE WEB, 18 March 2020
The Tibetan Parliament-in-exile approved an amount close to Rs 2,750,000,000 (36,815,000 USD approx) as the budget of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) for fiscal year 2020-21. The CTA has the twin tasks of attending to the welfare of the Tibetan refugees in India, Nepal, and Bhutan, and resolving the Tibetan issue for a free Tibet.
The exile Tibetan Charter requires the Parliament to hold sessions within six-month periods. The budget is considered in the March session, which is attended by 45 members of Parliament at the exiled Tibetan headquarters close to McLeod Ganj, and normally goes for 10 days. However this 9th session of the House was conducted in only one day, due to orders by the local Indian authorities forbidding gatherings of more than four people considering the global coronavirus epidemic.
The matters that had been planned to be discussed in the current session were withdrawn due to the time constraints, and will be brought up in the next session in September.
Karma Yeshi, Finance Minster of CTA, presented the budget. No discussions were allowed by Speaker Pema Jungney, so as to be able to conduct the business in the one day.
In the budget, education tops the list with 22% of the budget, followed by political affairs, administration and home affairs gets 21% each. Health gets 9%, and religious and cultural affairs has been allotted 2% of the budget.
The CTA (commonly known as the Tibetan Government-in-exile) has three branches, as in a typical democratic government: judiciary, legislature, and executive. There are seven departments under the executive and 12 foreign missions. There are schools, health services, cultural activities, and economic development projects also under the executive branch for the Tibetan communities in India, Nepal, and Bhutan.
The budget session of the 16th Parliament was planned from 17-27 March, which would have been the last budget presentation of incumbent President of CTA Lobsang Sangay. His term ends in May 2021.
One USD = 73.75 Indian rupees
That is just over 5 million. What happened to the rest? How much does the US give? EU and Canada, etc. CTA must be getting over $50 million per year from various governments.
The CCP is at its game of disinformation, painting black into white. It is universally known that the deadly coronavirus originated in Wuhan in Hubei Province. However, now they are using baseless accusations against the US and creating confusion in order to whitewash its mismanagement and hiding the truth from the world by punishing whistle blowers which resulted in the death of 8,272 innocent lives to date and infecting another 208,184 people.
Its propaganda machine is working overtime and its evil tentacles have reached even to the exile Government office. The Religious Affairs department issued a notice to the public about taking precautionary measures about the virus which it said originated in Wuhan, but on social media, it has been doctored by erasing the name of the place (Wuhan) where it originated. This is how the evil CCP operates, through deceit and lies.
The other disinformation was a message which declared that HH was praying in Dharamshala and that everyone should drink tea without salt or sugar before midday IST. Since the message was in Tibetan, I am convinced many unsuspecting Tibetans would have bought it including myself because it alleged that HH had recited mantras and then prayed for everyone. This obviously was the handiwork of the CCP to discredit HH and bring dishonour to his name.
All Tibetans must realise the propensity of the evil CCP for mischief and guard against dividing our community along the lines of cholkha and choelug, especially as the election for 2021 is fast approaching. There is a YouTube piece with the name “Markham” that looks like another incarnation of its predecessor “Gossip Tibet” which was expunged thankfully. The CCP is coming in all shapes and forms to divide us, discredit us, and doom us. Beware everyone!!! གཟབ་གཟབ་གནང་རོགས