Dushanbe, Oct. 12, (dpa/GNA) – Tajikistan’s authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon was re-elected with 90 per cent of the vote on Monday in a nationwide poll seen as largely ceremonial.
The result, securing Rahmon another seven years in power, was announced by the electoral commission in the capital Dushanbe.
Around 85 per cent of the country’s 5 million eligible voters handed in their ballots, according to authorities.
Four other contenders officially competed in the election, though there waes little doubt Rahmon would cling to power.
Rahmon, 68, has led the mountainous, former Soviet republic bordering China and Afghanistan for nearly three decades.
Having come to power amid a devastating civil war in the early 1990s following Tajikistan’s transition to independence from the Soviet Union, Rahmon has defined himself as the guarantor of the state’s stability.
Human Rights Watch described Tajikistan in a recent report as having a “dire human rights situation,” while the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which independently monitored the vote, has never recognized an election in the country as democratic.
Tajikistan is one of the poorest countries in the region, with many people dependent on remittances from relatives abroad, which make up 40 per cent of gross domestic product.
While its leaders long claimed Tajikistan was free of the coronavirus, the country has been hard-hit by the pandemic, recording more than 10,000 cases.
GNA