DUSHANBE, March 1, 2010, Asia-Plus — The Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER) presented a statement about the preliminary results of the February 28 parliamentary elections at a news conference in Dushanbe on March 1.
Delivering the statement, the CCER head Mirzoali Boltuyev noted that five political parties won seats in the Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) through a proportional party list system from a single nationwide constituency, namely the People’s Democratic Party (PDPT), the Islamic Revival Party (IRPT), the Communist Party (CPT), the Agrarian Party (APT) and the Party of Economic Reforms.
According to him, PDPT won 71.69 percent of votes (2,261,406 votes), IRPT – 7.74 percent (244,171 votes), CPT – 7.22 percent (228,000 votes), APT – 5.1 percent (153,236 votes), and the party of Economic Reforms – 5.09 percent (147,896 votes).
We will recall that seventy-three party list candidates from all eight political parties of the country were registered by the CCER to contest 22 seats in the single nationwide constituency.
Three political parties – the Democratic (DPT), Social-Democratic (SDPT) and Socialist (SPT) parties – failed to pass a five percent threshold. DPT won 0.84 percent of votes (26,614 votes), SDPT – 0.72 percent (22,610 votes) and SPT – 0.47 percent (14,907 percent).
The CCER head said 87.1 percent (3,154,422 people) of the country’s 3,621,174 voters cast ballots.
Boltuyev noted that final results of election of MPs from 41 single-mandate constituencies would be published in ten days. He just said 131 candidates ran for parliament in 41 single-mandate constituencies. Elections in 40 of them election were recognized valid while a second round will be held in one single-mandate constituencies.
The Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) has 63 members and 41 members are elected from single-mandate constituencies. 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.
As it had been reported earlier, the district election commissions (DECs) registered 153 candidates out of 185 nominated to compete for seats in 41 single-mandate constituencies. In the meantime, registration of one candidate was annulled and twenty-one persons running for election to parliament in single-mandate constituencies withdrew their candidacies.
