DUSHANBE, November 26, 2014, Asia-Plus — The Agrarian Party of Tajikistan (APT) is expected to nominate twenty-four candidates for the 2015 parliamentary elections due in late February.
“Our party will include 10 candidates in the party list and fourteen other their candidates will run in single-mandate constituencies,” the APT public relations department head Ziyo Rahmon, who is also the member of the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER), told Asia-Plus in an interview.
According to him, the party will hold its 6th congress in Dushanbe on December 18. “The 210 delegates from all regions of the country will attend the congress; besides, 40 guests from the government and other political parties have been invited to attend the congress,” Ziyo Rahmon noted.
The congress will determine the party list of candidates for the parliamentary elections and elect new leader of the party.
The Agrarian Party of Tajikistan (APT) is the brainchild of its first chairman Amir Qaraqulov. The first deputy head of the party, Rustam Latifzoda, who is also chairman of the Vose district in Khatlon province, was elected acting chairman of the Agrarian Party in March this year after Amir Qaraqulov’s death.
The Agrarian Party of Tajikistan was registered with the Ministry of Justice in November 2005. Like the Party of Economic Reforms that was also registered with the Ministry of Justice in November 2005, the Agrarian Party is seen as a “pocket party.” In 2010, the APT won two seats in the Majlisi Namoyandagon.
According to some source, the APT now has some 30,000 members. The majority of APT”s members are farmers and peasants, but the upper echelon are agriculture specialists.
The AP has no clear ideological outline, and mainly focuses on the issue of agricultural production. The party advocates for a halt in export of raw materials from Tajikistan, and for the country to switch to the production and export of finished products.
