(TibetanReview.net, Feb26’26) – Sikyong Penpa Tsering of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) has on Feb 24 expressed gratitude to the Tibetan people for having re-elected him on the basis of the record of his performance in the past nearly five years, without him having campaigned for it.
“During the 2021 general elections too, I decided not to enter into any competitive campaigning in order to avoid causing conflict in society and leaving a negative mark in its aftermath. It has been my position that the Tibetan public should decide the outcome of this election on the basis of my past performance and so did not carry out even a publicity work for my re-election. I took the stand that making a lot of promises would be meaningless,” he said.
“and so I can say with pride that I did not sow any seed during the course of this election which could germinate discord in society,” he said.
Sikyong Penpa Tsering said that during the 2021 election, he had publicised three position slogans which he still stood by, namely equal and fair treatment of all without any sort of provincial and religious distinction; policies and strategies on any undertaking to be determined by taking into account their current, future, and long-term effects; and to strive towards the resolution of the issue of Tibet on the basis of the middle way approach by adapting the strategy for achieving it acceptable to the two sides on the opposite ends.
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It was earlier announced by the Election Commission of the CTA on Feb 13 that Mr Penpa Tsering had been re-elected as the Sikyong on the basis of his margin of victory in the preliminary poll, having won 61.025% of the votes.
While the preliminary polls for the Sikyong and the 45-member Tibetan Parliament in Exile (TPiE) are held without any official lists of candidates – inasmuch as they are meant to elect lists of candidates for the final polls rather than to elect the Sikyong and the TPiE members as such – the rules say that a person who gets more than 60% of the votes in the preliminary poll for the Sikyong election should be declared elected without having to face the final poll.
A person cannot be elected for more than two terms as the Sikyong, although there is not such limit for the election of the members of the TPiE.
For the TPiE election, Tibetans will go to poll on Apr 26, 2026. The lists of candidates will include those winning the highest number of votes in the preliminary poll and others who would volunteer to stand as candidates.
The 45 seats are divided 10 each for the three traditional provinces of Tibet, two each for the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the pre-Buddhist religion Bon, two geographical constituency seats for the Tibetans living in North and South Americas, two other geographical constituency seats for the Tibetans living in Europe and Africa, and a further one geographical constituency seat for the Tibetans living in Australasia (excluding India, Nepal and Bhutan).