TWA to campaign for higher voter turnout in 2011 Kalon Tripa Elections

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Phayul
By Phurbu Thinley
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Dharamsala, March 31: With Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister) elections little more than a year away, the exile Tibetan community is already facing a growing anxiety in choosing a right candidate for the highest elected post in the exile Tibetan administration.

The exiled Tibetan leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has lately described himself as a “semi-retired” person, saying he has already delegated much of the administrative and political decisions to the democratically elected Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile.

Tibetan women demonstrates to mark the 51st Tibetan Women’s Uprising in Lhasa in 1959, in Dharamshala, India, on 12 March 2010. (File photo/TWA/India)

The decision, the Dalai Lama says, is pursuant to the “highest priority” given soon after coming into exile in 1959 to establishing a system of governance for the Tibetan people fully based on democratic principles.

The Dalai Lama, however, insists, it would be his “moral responsibility” to continue to act as the “free spokesperson” of Tibetan people until a mutually satisfactory solution to the Tibet problem is found.

The Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA), one of the largest NGOs in the exile Tibetan community, today announced ambitious action plans to push for a 75% voter turnout both during the preliminary and final elections of Kalon Tripa in 2011.

The organisation believes a higher voter turnout will further enhance the legitimacy of the Tibet’s government in exile, which is routinely denounced as an illegal body by the Chinese government.

TWA has assured itself that the “poor awareness” was the single biggest contributor for the low turnout in the last Kalon Tripa elections in 2006, saying that the public were largely unaware of the election process and the timing of the polls.

Estimates show that some 120,000 of the approximately 150,000 Tibetan exiles are eligible to vote (above 18 years old). In the last Kalon Tripa election in 2006, only 72,000 (60%) were registered to vote and, worse still, an estimated 26.8% (32,205 people) actually voted.

TWA complains that barely a quarter of the eligible voters actually voted in the final elections in 2006.

The organisation hopes to achieve its goal of 75% voter turnout through what it calls “strategic plans”, which include a year-long three-part action plans aimed at raising the “much needed awareness” among Tibetan exiles on the importance of public participation in the elections.

The plans include public education on the election process from July 2010-May 2011, conducting a large scale “Straw Poll/Mock Election” in 41 regions around the world on July 6 (His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 75th Birthday) and by hosting a televised debate of the mock election’s top-ten winning candidates on September 2 (Tibetan Democracy Day) in Bylakoppe Tibetan settlement in South India.

With general elections only a year away, TWA says it is also equally dismayed to see that not a single person has come forward so far to claim candidacy or shown any visible interest in the election contest for the post of the Kalon Tripa.

TWA, however, has little to say on what has actually led to this kind of dismal situation in the exile polity.

“And hence there is a need to educate the public in advance both on the importance of the democratic right to vote and the need to exercise one’s voting right effectively,” Kirti Dolkar Lhamo, TWA's president, said at a press conference here this evening.

Other than holding awareness campaigns on the elections, TWA says it will completely refrain from endorsing or nominating any particular candidate for the Kalon Tripa elections.

In 2001, Prof Samdhong Rinpoche became the first directly elected prime minister in 2001 after the Dalai Lama, as part of an effort to further democratize the Tibetan polity towards the late 1990’s, called for a directly elected leader of the Tibetans living in exile.

Rinpoche is currently running his second consecutive term in the office after he secured a landslide victory in the 2006 elections receiving more than 29,000 votes (90.72%) of the total votes cast.

Rinpoche will complete his term in August 2011. Like other democratic countries, the charter of the Tibetan exiles bars a candidate from serving more than two terms.