By Choekyi Lhamo
DHARAMSHALA, Mar. 25: The online platform SmartVote Tibet on Thursday re-launched its website ahead of the final 2021 election, urging Tibetan voters to answer a questionnaire for individual ‘matching’ with candidates running for representatives in the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile (TPiE) and the Presidential (Sikyong) post of the exile Tibetan polity. The press release noted that the website has created over 6100 ‘matches’ of candidates with voters, and urged the Tibetan community to participate in their initiative before the final Election day on April 11.
Yeshi Deuss-Ngingthatshang, a founding member of Project Democracy, said in the press release, “Now that the official Sikyong and Chithue candidates have been confirmed by the Election Commission, the website has been updated to reflect the changes. For example, the Sikyong section now only shows Kaydor Aukatsang and Penpa Tsering”. Candidates for the next Sikyong and 42 candidates vying for parliamentary seats took part in the questionnaire during the preliminary round.
According to India’s SmartVote Tibet coordinator, Pema Gyaltsen, 20 Chithue candidates who participated in the questionnaire made it to the final list. “All the 37 questions remain the same as the preliminaries. We have updated the name of the candidates, both Sikyong and Chithue, for the final election in accordance with EC’s announcement. I urge all the remaining candidates in the shortlist to partake in the initiative for the tool to be successfully implemented,” he further added. The Election Commission on Sunday announced the lists of the final candidates to kick start the 19-day campaign window which is to be closed at 5pm on April 8.
“The Chithue candidates section has also been updated and we appeal to all candidates who have not yet created their profiles to do so as soon as possible, we invite any standing candidate to reach out to us if they require assistance” said Wangpo Tethong, member of the SmartVote Tibet project. The platform was formed by a group of Tibetans under the association “Project Democracy” to encourage voters of all ages to make informed choices in the electoral process. It is an adaptive version of smartvote developed in 2003 by Politools in Switzerland, where additional features like Smart Spider Mapping provides a profile of the candidates and the users, which are visually etched on a spider-web displaying political graphs through the algorithm.
