(TibetanReview.net, Jan08’21) – Unofficial results of the preliminary round of voting meant for choosing candidates for the election of the Sikyong, the executive head of the Central Tibetan Administration, compiled by tibetsun.com, show that former Speaker of the Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE), Mr Penpa Tsering, has taken a commanding lead with nearly 21,600 votes. He is followed by Kelsang Dorjee Aukatsang, the man whom he had succeeded as Representative at the Office of Tibet, Washington, DC, with nearly 13,000 votes. Former CTA minister Ms Dolma Gyari has won nearly 12,700 votes.

The candidate-selection voting for the Sikyong election as well as for the 45-member TPiE election took place on Jan 3. The polling for their actual elections will be held on Apr 11.

The Tibetan Election Commission has already announced that there will be only two candidates for the Sikyong election, bar exceptional specified circumstances.

The candidate-selection voting becomes actual election if a person gets 60% or more votes in the preliminary poll. But this is clearly not going to happen this time.

While no official results of the preliminary poll have been announced, the above three current vote counts stand, according to the Tibetan Service of rfa.org Jan 7, citing Tibetan election officials speaking on condition of anonymity.

Counting is scheduled to go on till Jan 11, with the official announcement of the results for the two elections due on Feb 8.

It is not clear how many votes still remain to be counted, since there has been no announcement of the number of voters who took part in the poll.

The tibetsun.com compilation of the results is seen to be based on a total of 55,476 votes. The total number of registered voters was previously stated by the Tibetan Chief Election Commissioner to be more than 80,000.

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