DUSHANBE, November 14, 2009, Asia-Plus — Proposal of the Social-Democratic Party (SDPT) to postpone the forthcoming parliamentary elections due in February 2010 until mid-spring 2010 is logical but it is in contrary to the country’s Constitution and the RT Law “On the Majlisi Oli (Tajikistan’s parliament),” the Communist Party (CPT) leader Shodi Shabdolov said in an interview with Asia-Plus.
“Under the country’s legislation, MPs are elected for five years, while in case of postponement of the elections, the terms of tenure of office for MPs is violated,” said Shabdolov, “Nobody, except people, may extent MPs tenure. Even the president does not have the right to fix a different date for elections. In this case, it is necessary to make amendments to the Constitution.”
“We are against making frequent addenda and changes to the Constitution because no good comes from this practice,” said the CPT leader. “We had gone through this during the civil confrontation, when parliament had been making amendments to the country’s basic law practically every day.”
He considers that the best time for holding elections is autumn or spring, when the country has fewer problems, people are not so busy with agricultural work and there are no electricity shortages. “However, the law is above all,” Shabdolov stated.
We will recall that the Social-Democratic Party on November 10 made a number of proposals over the parliamentary elections in the country due in February 2010. Taking into consideration geographical conditions of Tajikistan (mountains cover 93 percent of Tajikistan”s surface area) and electricity shortages in the winter period as well as the fact that there is no access to voters in the winter period, the SDPT board, in particular, proposed to hold the 2010 parliamentary elections in mid-April 2010 and further parliamentary elections on November 6 of appropriate year.
