OTR Politics - March, 2005

Click here for Joshua Abrams' original piece on Tajikistan.

Tajikistan’s February 27th elections fulfilled President Rakhmonov’s primary objective: to stack the electoral deck in his favor. According to the official results, the People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan (PDPT)—the President’s party, which he himself leads—won 80% of the vote. Of the four other national parties, only the Communist Party and Islamic Renaissance Party received enough votes to gain two seats each in the 63-member parliament. The PDPT will hold an even larger majority in the parliament than before, paving the way for what will undoubtedly be an easy victory for the President in the 2006 presidential elections.

Fears of a Kiev-style revolution proved groundless. The elections were accompanied neither by greater activism among the country’s 6 million people nor by greater optimism that the vote would be freer or more fair this year.

The Orange Revolution did little to inspire the masses in Tajikistan. What it did do was allow Tajikistan’s ruling clique to very carefully manipulate the election campaign by controlling the candidate pool, keeping suspect foreign organizations at arms length, and limiting access of campaign information to the public to a bare minimum.

Government efforts to publicize the elections were little more than boring exhortations to “vote,” without anyone working very hard to publicize candidates or their platforms. Campaign posters, tiny things with small photographs of unsmiling bureaucrats taped precariously to storefronts and construction walls, only appeared in the last week or so of the campaign.

The Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which sent about 150 international elections observers throughout the country, declared that the elections “failed to meet many key OSCE commitments and other international standards on democratic elections.” Reports of ballot tampering, serial voting, voter intimidation, and other fraud and abuses were widespread throughout the country. Elections workers were poorly trained, and opposition party observers were in many instances obstructed from doing their jobs.

In contrast to the OSCE, the Observers’ Mission of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS, the organization of Soviet successor states) claimed that the election was “well-organized, generally with high voters’ activity.” This should come as no surprise. Whereas the OSCE represents the countries of the European Union, Canada, and the US, the 207 CIS observers come from such pinnacles of democracy as Russia, Armenia, Belarus, and Uzbekistan. Compared to their electoral systems, Tajikistan’s vote was a watershed of civic participation.

The day after the elections, representatives of the Communist Party, Democratic Party, Social Democrats and Islamic Rebirth Party jointly refused to recognize the results of the election. They have formally registered their complaints with the Central Elections Commission. Government officials, however, refute the opposition parties’ claims, citing the CIS observers’ positive assessment of the elections as proof that the vote reflected the will of the people.

Whatever the actual will of the people may be, there is little worry that the opposition will inspire any Ukrainian-style civil uprising. Unrest is occurring in neighboring Kyrgyzstan, where the ruling elite came up against small but vocal popular protests against the Republic’s parliamentary elections in February. But the people of Tajikistan are not so confident of civic action, remembering the civil war that claimed 100,000 lives in the 1990’s, and most prefer stability to anything else.

The President’s reaction to the elections was measured but upbeat. According to Dushanbe newspaper Asia-Plus, President Rakhmonov acknowledged some problems in the voting. “I would not compare elections in our society to those in the United States and the West,” he was quoted as saying. “We are just at the starting point of the creation of a democratic, secular country with the rule of law.”

President Rakhmonov has every reason to be satisfied with Tajikistan’s new democracy—he has learned to control it like a Tammany Hall boss. Still hale at 52, he recently had the constitution changed to allow him to run for two more seven-year terms. His continuing political consolidation will allow him to further his control over the country and its resources. As he appoints more family and friends to positions of influence, the country will turn into a clan-based despotism, which Rakhmonov can continue to call a democracy for the benefit of the international community. It’s his country; I suppose he can call it whatever he likes.

Joshua Abrams lives and works in Tajikistan. He has published on environmental issues in the former Soviet Union. He has also has a short story currently posted on Reflection's Edge.