Tajikistan - Politics 2020
Tajikistan went to the ballot box on 01 March 2020 to elect a new parliament President Emomali Rahmon, who had ruled Tajikistan since 1992, has used the security forces, judicial system, and other levers of power to sideline opponents and independent journalists and suppress dissent.
Tajikistan is an authoritarian state dominated politically by President Emomali Rahmon and his supporters. The constitution provides for a multiparty political system, but the government has historically obstructed political pluralism and continued to do so during the year. Constitutional amendments approved in a 2016 national referendum outlawed nonsecular political parties and removed any limitation on President Rahmon’s terms in office as the “Leader of the Nation,” allowing him to further solidify his rule. The most recent national elections were the 2015 parliamentary elections, which lacked pluralism and genuine choice, according to international observers, many of whom called the process deeply flawed. The most recent presidential election, which took place in 2013, also lacked pluralism and genuine choice, and did not meet international standards.
Human rights issues included reports of torture and abuse of detainees by security forces; arbitrary arrest or detention, beatings, and other forms of coercion by the government; harsh prison conditions; political prisoners; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; censorship, site blocking, and criminal libel; substantial interference with the rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, such as restrictive nongovernmental organization (NGO) laws and repression, harassment, and incarceration of civil society and political activists; politically motived prosecutions of human rights lawyers and journalists.
The President is elected by the voters of the country to serve a 7-year term. Voters elect the President through a secret ballot, and an absolute majority is required to win. The incumbent president Emomali Rahmon was re-elected following constitutional changes enacted in 2003 that allowed him to run for re-election for a possible two, additional seven-year terms.
A former collective farm chief, Rahmon comes from a humble background, but as he strengthened his grip on power, his relatives accumulated vast fortunes using their clout with the president. The Rahmon family’s ever-increasing business interests in the country are widely known among Tajiks, although people hesitate to criticize them publicly, fearing retaliation from security forces in the strictly controlled country.
Many members of Rahmon’s family are involved in businesses and politics and exercise dominant control over the Central Asian’s nation’s government and economy. Rahmon’s eldest son, Rustam, is the mayor of Dushanbe and is believed by many to have been tapped to eventually replace his father, who has been in power since 1992. There had long been speculation that 2020 would be the year in which President-for-life Emomali Rahmon, now aged 67, could step aside in favor of his 32-year-old son, Rustam Emomali. There was also talk of some other dark-horse placeholder, who could be the public face of government while the family ran the show from behind the curtain. Neither development would have a negligible impact on the course of the country.
In the National Assembly (Majlisi Milli) 34 members are elected by indirect vote to serve 5-year terms. Of these, 25 are selected by local deputies, 8 are appointed by the President, while 1 seat is reserved for the former president. All members are appointed either by the President or by officials the President has appointed.
In the Assembly of Representatives (Majlisi Namoyandagon), 41 members are directly elected by absolute majority vote in single-member constituencies to serve 5-year terms and 22 members are elected through a closed-list proportional representation system to serve 5-year terms. This is essentially a mixed electoral system with proportional and majoritarian tiers. In single seat districts or the majoritarian tier, the electoral system is two-round. Second-round elections are also triggered in any constituency with less than 50 percent voter turnout. The proportional tier operates as a single nationwide constituency, and parties face 5 percent threshold to gain seats in parliament.
There were seven legal major political parties, including the PDPT. Opposition political parties had moderate popular support and faced high levels of scrutiny from the government. All senior members of President Rahmon’s government were PDPT members. Most members of the country’s 97-seat parliament were members of the PDPT, progovernment parties, or PDPT affiliates.
A government-owned weekly Tajik newspaper published an edition with a blank front page in protest at not having the ability to access "objective information," because local officials refuse to speak to or inform journalists. It was the first time a state-owned publication in the Central Asian country has publicly protested in such a manner, joining other privately owned publications that in the past have published blank or blacked-out pages to draw attention to an issue or decry censorship. In a column published on the second page of the newspaper on December 24, Alolat Saifulloyeva, the chief editor of Takhti Kuboda, wrote that the "first page is a mirror image of how each official should see their own appearance." She said the blank page was a "protest against the lack of objective information and the refusal of officials to cooperate with local journalists."
The inaccessibility of officials is an overall problem faced by Tajikistan's mass media. Government agencies and bodies rarely respond in a timely fashion to media inquiries or ignore them altogether. Many independent media outlets have been forced to stop publishing due to pressure and censorship, and a number of journalists have left the country. Those who have chosen to stay work in difficult conditions.
As expected, Rahmon's ruling party won the 01 March 2020 parliamentary elections and with its pro-presidential allies retained control over parliament. Central Election Commission Chairman Bakhtiyor Khudoyorzoda announced preliminary results on March 2 showing 50.4 percent of the ballots cast supported the ruling People's Democratic Party, securing 47 seats in the 63-seat Majlisi Namoyandagon (Assembly of Representatives). According to Khudoyorzoda, the only opposition political party, the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, failed to meet the 5 percent threshold for representation in parliament, while the Agrarian Party secured 7 seats, the Party of Economic Reforms won five, and the Communist Party got two seats. The Democratic Party and the Socialist Party got one seat each by the party lists.
Tajik President Emomali Rahmon, already the longest-serving leader in the former Soviet Union, was nominated to run for the presidency once again. The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Tajikistan formally announced its nomination of Rahmon on August 26, suggesting that the 67-year-old incumbent will participate in the October 11 election. There has been speculation that Rahmon, who has been president since 1992, would bow out of the vote to clear the way for his son, Dushanbe Mayor Rustam Emomali, to run for president.
Tajikistan's authoritarian President Emomali Rahmon was reelected for a fifth term with nearly 91 percent of the vote, according to preliminary official results, following a tightly controlled and largely ceremonial election. The Central Asian nation's Central Election Commission said on 12 October 2020 that 90.92 percent of voters had cast their ballot for Rahmon, the only post-Soviet autocrat in power longer than Alyaksandr Lukashenka of Belarus. CEC chairman Bakhtiyor Khudoyorzoda said that 85.4 percent of the electorate had cast their ballots in the October 11 polls, during which RFE/RL’s Tajik Service reported several instances of irregularities.
European Council spokesman Peter Stano said in a statement that the election was apparently carried out in a “peaceful and orderly manner,” but he noted that several of the recommendations made earlier this year by monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE ODIHR) “remain valid and unimplemented, such as the independence of the media environment and political plurality.”
The 68-year-old Rahmon was running against four little-known candidates that represent pro-government parties in the country's rubber-stamp parliament. They are widely seen as little more than a facade to give the vote the appearance of competition. According to the preliminary results, Rustam Latifzoda from the Agrarian Party received 3.03 percent of the vote; Rustam Rahmatzoda from the Party of Economic Reforms got 2.15 percent; Miroj Abdulloev from the Communist Party received 1.17 percent; and Abduhalim Ghafforzoda from the Socialist Party got 1.49 percent.
The election was the first since Rahmon's most influential political rival, the Islamic Renaissance Party (IRPT), was outlawed. The country's Supreme Court banned the IRPT as a "terrorist" organization in 2015. Many of the party leaders and officials have been imprisoned, while others fled the country amid a clampdown. The Social Democratic Party, the only genuine political opposition group inside the country, boycotted the election.
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