DUSHANBE, February 22, 2010, Asia-Plus — Tajikistan’s chief prosecutor has denied a statement by the Islamic Revival Party (IRPT) about numerous instances of violation of the parliamentary elections code during the election campaign as “unfounded.”
In a statement released on Saturday February 20, the Prosecutor-General Sherkhon Salimzoda noted that allegations of the IRPT about interference of local authorities in the election campaign, voiced by the IRPT spokesman Shamsiddin Said, “do not correspondent to the facts.”
W will recall that the IRPT spokesman Shamsiddin Said told a news conference in Dushanbe on February 15 that local authorities are interfering in the pre-election race to ensure victory of the ruling-party candidates. According to him, the party has recorded more than 50 instances of violation of the election laws and they have been sent to courts, prosecutor’s offices and the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER). “The number of such violations is increasing from day to day,” the spokesman said.
In the meantime, the chief prosecutor says that courts and prosecutor’s offices have not received IRPT’s complaints about interference of local authorities in the election campaign. “There were only four complaints to courts and one complaint to the prosecutor’s office; however all these complaints concerned improper work of the regional electoral commissions,” said the chief prosecutor, “All those complaints were considered and appropriate decisions were made on them.”
According to him, the CCER has received 18 complaints to this date and 16 of them concern improper work of the regional electoral commissions. “The remaining two complaints have been lodged against local authorities,” said the chief prosecutor, “The complaints lodged to the CCR have also been considered in accordance with the country’s legislation.” “We asked Mr. Shamsiddin Said to send us a list of 50 complaints, about which he stated at the news conference, so that we could check them, but he has not done this yet,” Salimzoda said.
He added that the prosecutor-general’s has received 8 applications so far, six of them are about the registration of candidates for local legislatures. They were sent for consideration to the electoral commissions.
In his statement Salimzoda applies to candidates for parliament and local legislatures, their representatives, political parties and media asking to release only checked and accurate facts. We ask them to take into consideration that the country’s penal code provides for punishment for distribution of obviously false information, he stressed.
