Tajikistan - Politics 2000
Further constitutional amendments in 1999 made the Supreme Assembly bicameral, consisting of a 34-seat upper house called the National Assembly and a 63-seat lower chamber called the Assembly of Representatives. All serve five-year terms, though only the members of the Assembly of Representatives are popularly elected; seats in the National Assembly are assigned by the president or by local deputies.
On 23 March 2000, the local representative authorities elected 25 of the 33 deputies to the Upper House of the Tajik parliament, the Majlisi Milliy. Regional assemblies in the country's five electoral districts each elected five deputies. Earlier, the President of the country, Mr Imamoli Rakhmanov, had appointed the other eight members of the chamber. The newly elected Majlisi Milliy consists mostly of representatives of state administrative bodies, primarily the administrative heads of regions, cities and districts.
The 27 February 2000 elections were the first multi-party ones after the end of the civil war and the culmination of the peace process initiated in 1997, when the government and the Islamic-led opposition agreed to end five years of civil war.
A total of 324 candidates from six political parties contested the 63 seats, of which 41 were in single-member constituencies and 22 allocated under the proportional system. Run-off elections took place on 12 March in 12 constituencies where candidates in the February election failed to poll a majority vote of at least 50 percent.
The election campaign was tense and security was strengthened after a parliamentary candidate, Stamsullo Dzlabirov, was killed in a grenade attack the week before the elections. Some candidates and parties even threatened not to recognise the outcome of the elections as a whole. In a statement listing procedural irregularities during the first round of elections, the Islamic Revival Party accused the Tajik leadership of violating the protocol signed in November 1999 by President Rakhmonov and the IRP leader Said Abdullo Nuri on the conduct of the parliamentary elections. The ruling party of President Imamali Rakhmonov, the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan won the most seats with 30 of the 63 while the Communists won 13 seats. The Islamic Revival Party - IRP (Tajikistan is the only State in the region that has legalised an Islamic opposition party) won 2 seats and 15 seats were won by independent deputies.
While practically all observers from countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, Iran and Pakistan asserted that the elections had not given rise to any visible violations of the electoral laws, the head of the joint UN-OSCE mission said that they had fallen short of minimum standards. On 27 April, the newly formed bicameral Parliament convened its first joint session which officially closed the peace process. These were the first elections for the new Chamber established under amendments to the Constitution adopted following a referendum in September 1999. After the Majlisi Milliy was elected, the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), which had been set up in 1997 to implement the provisions of the peace agreement that ended the civil war in the country, held its final session on 26 March 2000. The final stipulation of the peace agreement had been the holding of legislative elections.
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