DUSHANBE, July 10, Asia-Plus – Democratic principles of electoral processes were discussed Friday [July 7] at a meeting organized by the OSCE Centre in Dushanbe in cooperation with the National Association of Political Scientists of Tajikistan.
Ms. Yekaterina Klimenko, the OSCE Center Assistant for Media, has told Asia-Plus tha participants at the event focused on the various views and approaches used to define these principles, as well as on enhancing the democratic substance and transparency of the upcoming presidential election.
Andrey Shugurov, Deputy Head of the OSCE Centre in Dushanbe, praised the positive assessment the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda of Tajikistan made of the final OSCE/ODIHR Election Observation Mission report on the 2005 parliamentary elections. “I hope that a serious correction of former deficiencies, with active support from the international community, will provide for closer correspondence of the forthcoming presidential election with international standards despite certain shortcomings of the current election legislation in Tajikistan,” he said.
Suhrob Sharipov, the Director of the Center for Strategic Studies, telling the meeting said: “Such roundtable disussions on the threshold of the presidential election are help consider different proposals from opposition parties and international organizations.”
Other key speakers at the meeting included Azizmad Imomov, Deputy Justice Minister, and Isroil Shoyev, member of Tajikistan’s Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER).
The meeting was part of the project “Sensitization campaign on the compliance of the Tajik justice system with international human rights standards”, being implemented by the OSCE Centre in Dushanbe throughout 2006, according to Ms. Klimenko.
