.More than 50% registered voters report at polls in Tajikistan.

28/2 Tass 125

DUSHANBE, February 28 (Itar-Tass) - Tajikistan's Central Electoral
Commission /CEC/ is satisfied with voters' activity at the election to the
lower house of parliament, underway Sunday.

CEC's chief Mukhibullo Dadajanov told Itar-Tass 51.4% registered
voters had turned up at the polls by 13:00 hours local time. This makes it
possible to consider the election valid.
"About 1.85 million voters of the 3.5 million placed on registers have
made their choice," Dadajanov said. "The CEC is strictly watching the
progress of the election and compliance with the norms of electoral
legislation."
He said the CEC has not received any complaints yet from electoral
commissions in the precincts or political parties or international
observers.
Contesting for 63 seats in the lower house are 217 candidates. Of that
number, 73 are running on party tickets and another 144 are individual
candidates nominated in single-mandate precincts.
Various international organizations, including the European security
organization OSCE and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a delegation
of Russia's Federal Assembly, and representatives of more than 25
countries inside and outside the CIS. None of the observer missions has
made public its assessment of the voting procedures so far.
The leaders of the country's eight political parties, too, say they
will make comments in the afternoon.
The CEC says preliminary results of the election will be published at
around 11:00 hours local time Monday.
The observers will likely formulate their own assessments by that time
as well.
The people who put their ballots in the balloting boxes expressed a
mixture of highly variegated feelings Sunday.
Tajikistan's first president Kahhor Makhkamov, who used to be First
Secretary of the Central Committee of Tajikistan's Communist Party7 during
the Soviet era and who voted at the same polling station as the incumbent
president Emomali Rakhmon, said he was voting for "this country's economic
revival, democratization of society and the increase of people's living
standards.
"The condition in which Tajikistan finds itself now is known perfectly
well to all and sundry," Makhkanov said. "I hope the democratic election
will speed up our transition to a new scenario of development."
"I'm voting for peace, stability and the earliest possible provision
of jobs for all the citizens, most of whom had to leave Tajikistan for
earning money abroad," said Munira Kurbanova, a 20-year-old student of the
Tajikistani Medical University.



"The more democratic and transparent this
parliamentary election is, the bigger the prestige the country will enjoy
in the international arena," President Emomali Rakhmon said as he cast his
ballot.
"God be with us," he said as he pressed into he ballot box slot.
-0-kle/gor


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