In a message posted on a Tibetan language website, Gyari, a Tibetan diplomat and former minister thanked his friends and supporters and said that he has no intentions to stand in the elections for PM seat.
The Dalai Lama's special envoy Lodi Gyari, who has led the Tibetan side to nine rounds of talks with Beijing, has said he has no intentions to contest the election for Tibetan prime minister-in-exile.
In a message posted on a Tibetan language website, Gyari, a Tibetan diplomat and former minister thanked his friends and supporters and said that he has no intentions to stand in the elections for PM seat.
Gyari, a Tibetan diplomat residing in Washington D.C, was one of the 19 candidates whose names were posted on the website as contenders for the post of prime minister.
However, after his refusal to contend for the top post, former minister Tenzin Namgyal Tethong and Harvard law graduate Lobsang Sangay are the favourites among the Tibetan diaspora which will go to preliminary polls on October 3, 2010 and final polls on March 20, 2011.
Meanwhile, the Tibetan Women’s Association has decided to hold "Mock election of PM" on the occasion of 76th Birth Day of the Dalai Lama on July 7 with an aim to ensure at least 75 per cent turnout of voters in two rounds of elections for the post of PM.
The election of the second Prime Minister of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile, who will succeed Prof Samdong Rinpoche on completion of his tenure in August 2011, is considered an important development.
As part of further democratization of the exile government, the Dalai Lama announced landmark reforms in 2000, calling for direct election of the Prime minister and in the first election in 2001, Prof Samdong Rinpoche was elected as the first Kalon Tripa ( Prime minister) of the exile government and was re-elected in 2006.
The charter of the Tibetan exiles bars a candidate from serving more than two consecutive terms.
The 2011 Kalon Tripa election is consequential, suggestive of the exile government’s direction in the coming five years and future of Tibetan struggle when the Dalai Lama will turn 80.
Meanwhile, Tibet's government-in-exile has reacted angrily to China's reported move to determine "who will succeed the Dalai Lama when he dies".
"Neither the Tibetans in Tibet nor those in the free world would recognize a Dalai Lama appointed by China," Tseten Samdup Chhoekyapa, the Dalai Lama's representative in Geneva, said.
"The Dalai Lama is there to lead the Tibetan people both spiritually and politically but any Lama appointed by the Chinese would have a hidden agenda, the control of the Tibetan people," he observed.
"Tibet has been led by different leaders believed to be incarnation of Dalai Lama and inhabited by the soul of a Bodhisattva, or enlightened for the past 400 years," Chhoekyapa said.
But the current and 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was forced into exile in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule and since then, he has peacefully campaigned for limited autonomy for his homeland, he said.
"However, China, accuses him of being a violent terrorist intent on returning Tibet to feudalism and dividing the People's Republic," he said.
On Thursday, a senior Communist Party official explained to foreign journalists how it would stop future Dalai Lamas from causing as much trouble as Gyatso.
From now on, the selection of reincarnations -- known to the Chinese as living Buddhas -- would follow a set process and end with approval from Beijing.
Chhoekyapa said that it was also possible that the Dalai Lama may decide that his successor will be found outside Tibet as it has happened before in case of the fourth Dalai Lama, materialized in Mongolia and the sixth in India.
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