Tajikistan Parliamentary elections defeated radical Islamist mindset
Monitoring Desk: The official results of Parliamentary elections of Tajikistan confirmed that President Rakhmon is holding the country with a tight grip, reports Dispatch News Desk .
Results also indicated that the Islamic Revival Party was washed away from national politics though it placed 46 candidates.
According to official results released by Chief election Commission (CEC) of Tajikistan, the party of President Rakhmon got 65.2% followed by the Agrarian Party, which received 11.8 percent—- a very grave difference of votes between the two top parties. In third place the Economic Reform Party got only %7.6 percent of the vote and the fourth was – the Socialist Party with 5.5 percent. Results also indicated that the Islamic Revival Party was washed away from national politics though it placed 46 candidates.
Radical Islamists having links in Afghanistan tried to destabilized the government in year 2012 but government swiftly took action against them and election results indicated that Islamist party has no place in Tajik main stream politics. Political observers believe that this is dangerous trend because Islamists will try to create problems for government once they have understood that they cannot reach power through ballot.
The turnout of votes was 87.7 per cent of the total number of registered voters. The People’s Democratic Party of sitting president by Rakhmon is winning parliamentary elections of Tajikistan since this party was made by him.
Polling was held for 63 parliamentary seats and there were 285 candidates. There were eight political parties contesting for next five year term of Tajik Parliament including Agrarian Party (31 candidates), the Democratic Party (7), the Communist Party (12), People’s Democratic Party (67), the Islamic Revival Party (46), Economic Reform Party (18), the Social -demokraticheskaya Party (15) and the Socialist Party (10).
Tajik election system is very complex and out of total 63 seats, 41 will be given to candidates with the highest votes from each single constituency and 22 will be proportionally distributed among the country’s eight registered political parties.
According to the electoral body, 212 candidates will compete for seats in single-mandate constituencies, of which 108 were nominated by political parties and 104 were self-nominated.
The People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan that is leading elections was founded and chaired by President Rakhmon, has 55 members in the 63-seat Assembly of Representatives, the lower chamber of the Tajik parliament elected in 2010.
The Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), which includes many of former wartime fighters, poises the biggest challenge for Rakhmon’s party, although it won only two seats in the national parliament in the last election.
