ELECTION RESULTS SHOW UZBEKISTAN’S RULING PARTY LEADING

Mon 28 October 2024:

Uzbekistan’s ruling party is leading the country’s parliamentary election held on Sunday during which voters are electing members of the lower house of parliament, the head of the Uzbek election authority said on Monday.

Zayniddin Nizamkhodjaev, the head of the country’s Central Election Commission, told a briefing that a total of 15,027,529 voters voted in the election, constituting a voter turnout of 74.72%.

Indicating that the vote successfully used a mixed electoral system for the first time in the country’s history, Nizamkhodjaev said the election was monitored by more than 850 foreign and international observers.

“For the first time in the history of our country, electronic voting on the election day was introduced as a trial in some polling stations in Tashkent,” Nizamkhodjaev further said.

He also said a total of 140,388 voters cast their ballots in 57 polling stations established in 40 Uzbek diplomatic and consular missions abroad.

Based on the preliminary results of the election, Uzbekistan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party led by President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, won 64 seats out of 150 in the Legislative Chamber, the country’s lower house of parliament.

The National Revival Democratic Party followed the country’s ruling party after receiving 29 seats in parliament.

A total of 11,028 polling stations opened as of 8 a.m. local time (0300GMT) across the country on Sunday during the election. Voting later ended at 8 p.m. local time (1500GMT).

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An ‘Evolving Political Story’?

The last time Uzbeks voted for a new parliament, in 2019, coincided with a period of genuine transition.

Under Mirziyoev’s leadership, the country of 35 million people was emerging from the self-imposed isolation of his late, long-ruling authoritarian predecessor, Islam Karimov.

A straitjacket economy was being opened to privatization and foreign investment, a sea change in visa policy fueled a boom in tourism, and a small but noticeable gap had emerged for independent media and critical bloggers.

The one element of the Uzbek system that had changed the least?

Politics, which, just as it was under hard-liner Karimov, remains a members-only club.

Five years since that vote, all available evidence suggests that the space for differences of opinion and critical views in Uzbekistan is once again shrinking rather than growing.

In the watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ 100-point scale for media freedom, Uzbekistan has fallen to 37.27 from 46.48 since 2019, as some of those bloggers that emerged during the Mirziyoev “thaw” found themselves on the end of harsh prison sentences.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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