By IANS,
Dharamsala : US-based Lobsang Sangay, a 42-year-old who considers India his second home after Tibet, was Wednesday elected the new Kalon Tripa, or the Tibetan prime minister-in-exile.
Sangay, a senior fellow of Harvard Law School who was born in India, has been chosen in the third direct elections for the Kalon Tripa that were held March 20. He will succeed the incumbent, Samdhong Rinpoche, who was chosen twice to the post.
Sangay’s five-year stint is expected to be full of challenges, with the Tibetan parliament giving a nod to the transfer of political power from Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to the newly elected political leader.
Election official Jamphel Choesang told IANS here that Sangay polled 27,051 votes. “Sangay got 55 percent of the total votes,” he said.
Choesang said the newly elected prime minister would take oath only after the tenure of the present cabinet expires in August.
Diplomat Tenzin Namgyal Tethong and Tashi Wangdi were the other contestants. They got 18,405 and 3,173 votes respectively.
Tethong also lives in the US, whereas Wangdi has been the Dalai Lama’s representative in Brussels, New York and New Delhi.
Sangay was born in 1968 in exile in India. He is often quoted as saying, “India is my second home. I have never been to my first home (Tibet).”
His father, who was settled in a village near Darjeeling, also fled Tibet in 1959 along with the Dalai Lama.
Incumbent Rinpoche had become the first directly elected prime minister for a five-year term in September 2001 after the Dalai Lama called for a directly-elected political leader of the exiles.
Rinpoche cannot re-contest as the Tibetan charter bars any individual from holding the office for more than two terms.
The Dalai Lama, 75, and his supporters fled Tibet and took refuge in India when Chinese troops moved in and took control of Lhasa in 1959.
He has since headed the Tibetan government-in-exile here, but this year decided to give up his political authority.
Some 140,000 Tibetans now live in exile, over 100,000 of them in different parts of India. Over six million Tibetans live in Tibet.