Election officials said Monday, December 24, that the 69-year old president Karimov received support from nearly nine out of 10 voters, but international monitors say the poll was not conducted fairly.
However OSCE spokeswoman Urdur Gunnarsdottir, who monitored the poll in the capital Tashkent, told BosNewsLife that her organization believes Sunday’s ballot failed to meet basic democratic standards. "The conclusion was that this elections did not live up to the OSCE commitments for democratic elections. Maybe to summarize: It was a very strictly controlled political environment," she said.
The OSCE spokeswoman noted that President Karimov ran against candidates who "publicly endorsed the incumbent president." In addition independent media and political parties have been banned giving a further advantage to President Karimov, who has ruled the isolated central Asian state since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
SECURITY FORCES
Gunnarsdottir said another problem was that security forces almost watched over the shoulders of voters in polling stations Sunday, while officials apparently manipulated the ballots. "There was a high number of police and other security personnel in the polling stations. And, during [the vote] count, there were procedural problems and cases of officials adjusting the figures."
She said the OSCE also questions the "improbably high" 90-point-six percent voter turnout. Uzbekistan’s Central Election Commission has denied the charges saying no fraud claims have been reported. It also won support from the observer mission of the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) made up of former Soviet republics.
Advocacy groups and Western diplomats say most of President Karimov’s opponents have been sent to jail or into exile and there are believed to be thousands of political and religious prisoners. Many of them are Christians, BosNewsLife learned.
Karimov has maintained a hostile stance toward the West. He threw out several foreign media organizations and most aid groups, and ordered the shutdown of an American air base two years ago following Western criticism of his government’s treatment of dissidents. (Part of this BosNewsLife News story also airs on the Voice of America (VOA) via www.voanews.com
