IRPT cries foul after winning zero seats

DUSHANBE: Tajikistan’s ruling party looked set to win a hefty parliamentary majority while the main Islamic opposition cried foul after being shut out in weekend elections said by Western observers to have been marred by “significant” cheating.

The opposition Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan (IRPT) — the only registered faith-based party in ex-Soviet Central Asia — failed to win a single seat for the first time since 1999.

IRPT, Tajikistan’s second largest party by membership, is one of the few potential sources of genuine opposition to President Emomali Rakhmon’s People’s Democratic Party 22-year rule.

IRPT chairman, Muhiddin Kabiri, said the party refused to accept results that “did not correspond with reality”.

Another opposition group, the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, critical of the Rakhmon government, failed to win any seats, as did the Communist Party.

Three other parties that made it into parliament — the Agrarian Party, the Party of Economic Reforms of Tajikistan and the Socialist Party of Tajikistan — are broadly viewed as pro-government.

The IRPT complained of government harassment during the campaign and a report by foreign election observers painted a damning picture.

“Significant shortcomings, including multiple voting and ballot box stuffing, and disregard of counting procedures meant that an honest count could not be guaranteed,” said Norbert Neuser, head of a European Parliament delegation.

The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly added: “The imbalanced coverage by state media, negative reporting on the opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, and the absence of genuine political debate considerably limited the opportunity for voters to make an informed choice.”

The IRPT, which includes members who fought against forces loyal to Rakhmon in a five-year civil war in the 1990s, won only 1.5% of the national vote, according to the central electoral commission.

“We knew that there was pressure and that it would not be easy for us, but we did not expect such results,” Mr Kabiri said. “It was the people who lost in these falsified elections.”

Khikmatullo Sayfullozoda, a member of the IRPT political committee, said the elections were “not transparent” and “contradictory to the interests of the people”.

Saimiddin Dustov, head of the Dushanbe-based think-tank Indem, said the government had apparently taken a decision to exclude the IRPT from the legislature.

“The authorities believe that the IRPT does not deserve to be in the parliament, in the political life of the country, and that the IRPT is no longer an important player,” he said.

Adding to the tense atmosphere on election day, a representative of a major mobile communications company said the government had ordered mobile operators to disable SMS messaging for “national security” reasons.

Then the announcement of the results was delayed by several hours, due to what Tajik media reported was a power failure at the headquarters of the impoverished country’s central election commission.