A 30-year-old lawyer from the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (GBAO), Faromouz Irgashev, has seized upon the change in rules lowering the age threshold for presidential candidates to 30 years and stated his intent to run for president.
He said in a YouTube video that he has intended to run for president because of his frustration at seeing citizens having their rights trampled by law enforcement.
“During my seven years of professional activity in Khorog and other parts of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, I have witnessed injustice being meted out by law enforcement officers against ordinary people. They abuse their powers and have turned the civil service into a private concern,” Irgashev said.
Eurasianet notes that the chances that Irgashev will even be able to get onto the ballot for the October 11 vote are vanishingly tiny, but the appearance of a potential candidate voicing actual criticism of the ruling order is remarkable in itself.
Before he even has a chance to compete in the election, he will need to collect signatures from at least 5 percent of eligible voters. According to the most recent available data, there are around 4.9 million people in Tajikistan eligible to vote. So he has to collect 250 signatures.
In an interview with Asia-Plus, Faromouz Irgashev said on September 3 that he and his supporters had managed to collect 39,000 signatures so far. “1,000 of them have been received after the video message,” Irgashev said.
According to him, the lion's share of signatures has been sent from Russia – from Moscow, St. Petersburg and other regions of Russia, where the most migrants from GBAO have been working. “We are also collecting signatures in GBAO districts,” Irgashev noted.
Little is known yet about Faromouz Irgashev. He was born in Khorog, the capital of GBAO, on April 2, 19190. In 2008, Irgashev finished local high school No 6. In 2013, he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the Russian-Tajik Slavic University (RTSU) in Dushanbe. From 2015 to 2020, he was member of the GBAO regional legislature (Majlis).
