DUSHANBE, December 18, 2009, Asia-Plus — The Social-Democratic Party (SDPT) does not trust election observes from member nations of the CIS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The SDPT is against participation of election observes from the CIS and SCO states in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Tajikistan because it does not trust them, the SDPT leader Rahmatillo Zoirov said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
“Usually, three groups of international observers participate in elections in Tajikistan – from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), CIS and SCO,” said Zoirov, “From the legal point of view, all election observer missions should act in accordance with single standards and ideally, their conclusions on the election results should be similar. However, for some reasons, conclusions of the OSCE observers always do not agree with conclusions made by the CSI and SCO representatives.”
Moreover, there is no necessity in separate participation of the election observer missions of the CSI and SCO in Tajik elections, because all member nations of the SCO, except China, are member nations of the CIS and the OSCE participating States, according to him.
“Besides, the CIS and the SCO always send observers to monitor elections in Tajikistan who are not lawyers,” said Zoirov, “They usually monitor just the voting process on election day not more than two or three hours, while rest the time, they attend dinner parties given for them by officials, causing financial and moral damage.”
“In the meantime, I have never seen that officials could get permission to give such parties for the SOCE election observers. They (OSCE election observers) do not touch even a cup of tea during the election process, because they do not have time for that and they mainly care about proper implementation of mission placed on them,” Zoirov stressed.
We will recall that the head of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER), Mirzoali Boltuyev, told reporters on December 16 that some 600 international observers are expected to arrive in Tajikistan to monitor parliamentary elections that will be held on February 28, 2010. According to him, election observers will come mainly from the CIS states, Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), SCO, OSCE and the European Union.
