Uzbekistan’s ruling party loyal to President Shavkat Mirziyoev was headed to an easy victory in the country’s parliamentary elections, according to preliminary results released by electoral authorities on October 27.
SEE ALSO: Uzbekistan's Parliamentary Elections And The Pretense Of ChangeThe Central Election Commission said that Mirziyoev’s Liberal Democratic Party was positioned to take 64 of the 150 seats in the lower house of parliament, despite recent reforms and predictions by the president that the election would be marked by “strong competition.”
However, the election was run with no opposition parties registered. The only competition the ruling party faced was from four "pocket" parties close to the president, according to experts.
All five parties that participated passed the voting threshold needed for parliamentary representation.
The Central Election Commission said that voter turnout was nearly 75 percent, more than enough for the authorities to consider the election a success.
Election monitors, rights groups, and average citizens were less convinced.
A monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in its initial assessment on October 28, said that “given the problems that our observers identified in yesterday's voting, counting, and tabulation, much more must be done to enhance transparency and confidence in the officially announced turnout and results.”
The vote was a trial run for a new mixed electoral system, the result of revisions to Uzbekistan’s constitution and electoral code. Under the changes, only half of the 150 parliament deputies are elected by voting for political parties. The other 75 candidates are elected individually.
Azay Guliev, special coordinator and leader of the OSCE short-term observers team, said that while the reforms represented progress, “significant challenges remain in the realization of fundamental freedoms, particularly the rights to association, peaceful assembly, and freedom of expression.”
The OSCE also said the five parties’ campaigns were essentially “devoid of real challenges to the policies of the ruling party or to each other,” while media coverage was “limited by restrictions on free expression.”
“In a landscape where the five registered parties share a common support for government policies, voters were not presented with genuine alternatives,” said Sargis Khandanyan, head of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly delegation.
RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service cited Uzbek citizens as expressing concerns about low voter turnout, despite the claims by officials.
One social media user was quoted as saying that the “American presidential election is more important to us than our own.”
The London-based director of the Central Asia Due Diligence group, Alisher Ilkhamov, meanwhile, was quoted by AFP as saying that the elections were just a "routine procedure" that allow "no place for institutional opposition and a real divide of power."