DUSHANBE (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th October, 2020) Tajikistan's presidential election has drawn over 46 percent of the electorate by noontime (07:00 GMT) with no incidents or violations registered so far, a member of the nation's electoral commission, Nosirjon Salimi, said Sunday.
"From 6:00 a.m. to noon, 2,285,459 voters, or 46.44 percent of citizens with electoral rights in Tajikistan voted," Salimi told reporters in capital Dushanbe.
Longtime President Emomali Rahmon is heavy favorite to win a fifth term to extend his 28-year rule of the Central Asian republic.
Russian lawmaker Alexey Chepa, who is part of a State Duma delegation to monitor the election, told Sputnik that the voting is taking place in an orderly fashion and that Tajikistan will not repeat the fate of neighboring Kyrgyzstan, which plunged into chaos after a disputed general election last week.
"The election is going very calmly. I am in Dushanbe, universities vote very actively, young people actively vote. There are no violations at all ... I am absolutely sure that there will not be anything similar to the situation that erupted after the elections in Kyrgyzstan," Chepa said.
The election is being monitored by delegations from post-Soviet organizations, namely the Commonwealth of Independent States, Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
In power since 1992, which already makes him the longest-serving ruler in the post-Soviet world, Rahmon intends to remain in office for another seven-year term.
