DUSHANBE, March 1, 2010, Asia-Plus — According to the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER), voter turnout in the February 28 lections to parliament and local legislatures was recorded at 85.2 percent.
In the territorial cross section the voter turnout percentage reportedly was: Sughd province – 86.8 percent; Khatlon province – 87.3 percent; Gorno Badakhshan – 89.8 percent; districts subordinate to the center – 81.1 percent; and Dushanbe – 80.4 percent.
The CCER source said that approximately 3.5 million voters had been registered and 3.1 million voters came to ballot boxes yesterday.
534 international observers, including those from OSCE, Shanghai Cooperation Organization, CIS and other authoritative organizations, monitored the voting process, the source said.
The Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) has 63 members, who are directly elected for a period of 5 years. 22 are elected through a proportional, party list system from a single, countrywide constituency. To win seats, parties must pass a five percent threshold. The remaining 41 members are elected from single-mandate constituencies under a majoritarian system. In the single mandate constituencies, candidates must win an absolute majority of votes to be elected. If none of the contestants manages to win an absolute majority during the first round, a second round of voting is held between the two leading candidates two weeks later. For any of the elections to be valid, there must be at least a 50% voter turnout.
We will recall that seventy-three party list candidates were registered by the CCER to contest 22 seats in the single nationwide constituency. The district election commissions (DECs) also registered 153 candidates out of 185 nominated to compete for seats in 41 single-mandate constituencies. In the meantime, nine persons running for election to parliament in single-mandate constituencies withdrew their candidacies.
