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Tajik President's Party Wins
Easy Election Victory;
Opposition Parties Call the
Vote a Fraud
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
World News, DUSHANBE, Tajikistan - The party of
Tajikistan's
strongman
overwhelming
victory
president
in
weekend
won
an
parliamentary
elections, but opposition parties alleged Tuesday that
the vote was rigged and demanded it be declared
invalid.
The
lone
nongovernment
party
in
the
parliament said it might not take the two seats it
won to protest the conduct of Sunday's vote in the
former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Another party
demanded
a
new
election.
President Emomali Rakhmonov's National Democratic
Party won 74.9 percent of the vote and took 17 seats
out of the 22 that are distributed among parties,
Central Election Commission chief Mirzoali Boltuyev
said.
Rakhmonov's
party
also
won
32
of
the
other
41
parliamentary seats that are filled through direct voting, he
said.
Pro-government Communist party was second with 13.6
percent, earning
three
seats. The
opposition Islamic
Renaissance Party came next with 8.9 percent of the vote,
earning two seats. The other three contesting parties failed
to pass the 5 percent barrier to get their members into the
63-seat
lower
house
of
Parliament,
Boltuyev
said.
Three seats were yet to be filled in run-offs expected to be
held within two months.
Critics accuse Rakhmonov of stifling dissent. They say a
referendum in 2003 that gave him the right to seek reelection until 2020 threaten the country's stability and
hopes
for
democracy.
All three opposition and two pro-government parties
demanded the election results be declared invalid, accusing
authorities of intimidating voters, allowing multiple voting
and
ballot-box
stuffing.
"We declare the election undemocratic," said Islamic
Renaissance Party, IRP, leader Muhiddin Kabiri. "It was a
cold shower for us. ... It was a tragedy for the Tajik
people."
He said the party was considering giving up the two seats it
had won. It is the only opposition party in the outgoing
Parliament, with just two seats. It was also the core of the
wartime opposition that fought Rakhmonov's government
during a five-year civil war in the 1990s and claimed
100,000
lives.
Kabiri accused the government of breaking the powersharing agreement that ended the civil war in 1997. "We
have made concessions before for the sake of peace,"
Kabiri said. "Now, our demands for legality are going to be
harsher,"
Kabiri
said.
Rahmatillo Zoirov, leader of the Socialist Democratic Party,
said Tuesday his party would not recognize the new
parliament and demanded a repeat election because "the
will of the people was completely ignored."
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Tajik President's
Party Wins Easy
Election Victory;
Opposition Parties
Call the Vote a Fraud
Tuesday, March 01, 2005
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[World
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"It
was
a
simple
deception," said senior Communist
party official Iskandar Kalandarov.
The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, which sent
about
150
observers,
said
the
elections were disappointing, saying
authorities
largely
controlled
the
campaign and accusing officials of
interfering with independent media.
OSCE mission chief Peter Eicher said
their observers had witnessed "direct
falsification" and other irregularities
that
"raise
doubts
about
the
integrity" of how the votes were
counted.
Boltuyev called the OSCE and opposition
criticism, "all words. Let them prove it."
Election officials said turnout was 92
percent, well exceeding the minimum 50
percent needed to make the vote valid.
About 3.1 million people were eligible to
vote
in
the
Rakhmonov,
nation
of
52,
international
6
had
observers
the
million.
assured
elections
would be held in a democratic manner.
But
in
the
past
several
months,
authorities shut down independent and
opposition
newspapers
and
began
investigations of two opposition leaders.
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