Tajikistan to elect lower parliament house on Sunday.

DUSHANBE, February 28 (Itar-Tass) -- Tajikistan elects its national
parliament's lower house on Sunday.

On Saturday, Tajik President Emomali Rakhmon called the parliamentary
elections "the most important event for the country and the people" in
2010 and said the country's leadership was set to "hold civilized,
transparent and democratic elections expressing free will of voters."
According to the country's Central Election Commission (CEC) chairman
Mirzoali Boltuev, 217 contenders will run for 63 seats in the lower
parliament house. There have been organized 3067 polling stations,
including 36 abroad. The CEC chairman said referring to the country's
migrations service that over half a million of Tajik citizen were living
abroad, the bulk of them - in Russia. Hence, polling stations will operate
in eight Russian cities with large Tajik communities.
Along with parliamentary and presidential election old-stagers, People'
s Democratic Party, Communist Party, Social Democratic Party, Socialist
Party, Democratic Party and the Party of Islamic Revival, the CEC admitted
two "political newcomers", the Party of Economic Reforms and Agrarian
Party, to take part in the elections.
According to leaders of participating parties, the country's official
authorities did not severely interfere in the election campaign, which was
carried out without any serious violations of the country's election laws.
"There were certain violations, the authorities did try to exert pressure,
there were appeals to courts, but one thing is obvious - as compared with
the previous parliamentary elections, one cannot but see certain positive
trends towards democratisation of the society and more freedom for
political opposition," leader of the Party of Islamic Revival of
Tajikistan Mukhiddin Kabiri told a round-table meeting at the Central
Election Commission in February 26. One of the country's oldest and
dynamically growing, the Party of Islamic Revival is the CIS' only
religious political force, which has two seats in the current parliament
and claims for at least 10 seats in the one to the elected.
The same opinion of the current election campaign was voiced by
Communist leader Shodi Shabdolov and by President Rakhmon's "eternal
political opponent", leader of the Social Democratic Party Rakhmatillo
Zoyirov. It is worth mentioning that only his party's program has
provisions supporting "interests of national minorities, including
Uzbek-language and Russian-language population of Tajikistan."
"The government will work with those political forces, representatives
of which will be elected by our people," Rakhmon said at a meeting with
the head of OSCE observer mission.
According to head of the CIS observer mission Sergei Lebedev, who is
the CIS executive secretary, "the election campaign was smooth, with no
incidents and in full compliance with the national election legislation
and the convention on standards of democratic elections" approved by the
CIS countries in 2002. "During my meeting with the Tajik president I saw
that the Tajik authorities and Emomali Rakhmon personally are really
interested in holding democratic relations," Lebedev stressed.
More than 500 observers from the OSCE, CIS, Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, European Union and a number of foreign countries, including
Russia, the United States and China, will monitor the election procedure.
Elections to regional, municipal and local bodies will also be held on
the same day. The local elections arouse media interest due to the fact
that Tajik president's son, Rustam Emomali, 23, is running for a seat in
the Dushanbe city legislature. According to independent experts, this
might be considered as a starting point for the "successor" capmaign.