Two Candidates Now Front-Runners in Final Vote for Tibet’s Exile Leader

Two candidates have now emerged as finalists in a first round of voting by Tibetans living outside their China-ruled homeland for leader, or Sikyong, of Tibet’s Dharamsala, India-based exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration, RFA has learned.

Thousands of Tibetans around the world took part in the preliminary round of voting on Jan. 3, with counting of the votes beginning on Jan. 5 and expected to end by Jan. 12. A second round of voting on April 11 will decide the winner along with members of the 17th parliament in exile.

Preliminary vote counts confirmed by RFA show former speaker of Tibet’s exile parliament Penpa Tsering in first place with 23,687 votes, followed by Aukatsang Kelsang Dorjee, former representative of Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, with 13,754 votes. Gyari Dolma, former CTA home minister and the first woman to run for the office of Sikyong, came third in the race with 13,126 votes, and Drongchung Ngodup, representative of the Dalai Lama in the Indian capital New Delhi, came fourth with votes totaling 9,742.

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