Crescent Magazine

By Maksud Djavadov

At first glance there appears nothing unusual about the ruling party’s “landslide victory” in the March 1 parliamentary elections in Tajikistan. All authoritarian regimes, in Central Asia as elsewhere, use “elections” as an administrative tool to formalize their grip on power. On closer examination, it becomes clear that no matter how authoritarian and power hungry the regime in Tajikistan may be, it still had to accept the popularity of the Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan (IRPT). Even though the regime allocated only 7.7% of the vote to the IRPT in the “new” parliament which was formed as a result of electoral fraud, as attested to by many international observers, the fact that IRPT is still legally present on the Tajik political scene is a great achievement based on Central Asian standards.