Rakhmon won 83.6 per cent in Wednesday’s elections against five also-ran candidates, full results showed, an improvement even on his showing in the 2006 polls when he won 79.3 per cent.
‘The respected Emomali Rakhmon is re-elected president of the Republic of Tajikistan,’ election commission chief Shermukhammad Shokhiyon told reporters in Dushanbe. With the presidential mandate now seven years, he is due to stay in power until 2020.
Rakhmon’s nearest rival, Communist Party candidate Ismoil Talbakov, won just five per cent of the vote. Turnout was an equally overwhelming 86.6 per cent of voters, the election commission said.
The president - who first came to power amid the chaos of the start of Tajikistan’s civil war in 1992 - now faces the task of coming good on election promises to lift the country bordering Afghanistan out of poverty and end its dire energy shortages. In a tale all too familiar throughout Muslim but vehemently secular ex-Soviet Central Asia, the five candidates standing against Rakhmon were virtual unknowns even inside the country, each with next to no chance of victory. Rakhmon’s most significant potential rival, female rights lawyer Oinikhol Bobonazarova of the moderate opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, was unable to stand after narrowly failing to muster the signatures required to register her candidacy.
‘The respected Emomali Rakhmon is re-elected president of the Republic of Tajikistan,’ election commission chief Shermukhammad Shokhiyon told reporters in Dushanbe. With the presidential mandate now seven years, he is due to stay in power until 2020.
Rakhmon’s nearest rival, Communist Party candidate Ismoil Talbakov, won just five per cent of the vote. Turnout was an equally overwhelming 86.6 per cent of voters, the election commission said.
The president - who first came to power amid the chaos of the start of Tajikistan’s civil war in 1992 - now faces the task of coming good on election promises to lift the country bordering Afghanistan out of poverty and end its dire energy shortages. In a tale all too familiar throughout Muslim but vehemently secular ex-Soviet Central Asia, the five candidates standing against Rakhmon were virtual unknowns even inside the country, each with next to no chance of victory. Rakhmon’s most significant potential rival, female rights lawyer Oinikhol Bobonazarova of the moderate opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, was unable to stand after narrowly failing to muster the signatures required to register her candidacy.