Tajikistan opposition party under ‘total pressure’ ahead of vote

DUSHANBE, Tajikistan: An opposition Islamic party in ex-Soviet Tajikistan says the government has cracked down on its politicians ahead of March 1 parliamentary polls in the mainly Muslim but secular country.

Tajikistan, the poorest state to emerge from the Soviet Union, has been led by strongman President Emomali Rakhmon since 1992 and his National Democratic Party of Tajikistan is expected to sweep the polls.

The chairman of the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT), the only legal faithbased opposition party in postSoviet Central Asia, told AFP the government has ratcheted up harassment of its 42,000 members in the run-up to polls.

“I would say our party is currently experiencing total pressure, especially in the country’s provinces,” the party’s chairman Muhiddin Kabiri told AFP.

“Elections are problematic in Tajikistan but we did not expect difficulties to this extent.”

Next month’s parliamentary and local council polls will be contested by eight parties. Currently IRPT has only two seats in the 63-seat people’s assembly, the lower house in a bicameral legislature.

The 49-year-old party chairman said that multiple fake Facebook accounts have been set up in his name, aimed at ‘blackening’ the party’s reputation. Allegations of Kabiri’s sexual infidelity have also been aired via the social media platform.

More than half the party’s 160 candidates put forward for the parliament were not allowed to register, while only 196 of its 720 candidates qualified to stand for council elections. The electoral authorities told many wouldbe candidates that they failed mandatory tests in the Tajik language — the state language that most Tajiks know perfectly.

One of the IRPT candidates who allegedly flunked the test had been PresidentRakhmon’smathematics teacher at school, Tajik media reported.

In January the party’s press secretary, Mahmudzhon Faizrakhmonov, complained of “pressure on our members in the regions from representatives of various government structures.”

This month, the party filed a complaint to the Central Electoral Commission after the country’s state-appointed chief Mufti, Saidmukkaram Abdulkodirzoda, said on state television that it should remove the word ‘Islamic’ from their name. — AFP

A Bangladeshi decoratesThe Central Language Martyrs’ Memorial monument at Dhaka University to pay homage to the martyrs of the 1952 Bengali Language Movement in Dhaka on Saturday. It marks 63 years since the police fired at thousands of protesters at a...