DUSHANBE, Tajikistan : Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmon on Thursday secured a fourth term at the helm of the poorest state in the former Soviet Union after crushing his also-ran opponents in polls damned by the OSCE as lacking any real choice.
Rakhmon won 83.6pc in Wednesday’s elections against five barely oppositional candidates, full results showed, an improvement even on his performance in the 2006 polls when he won 79.3pc.  “The respected Emomali Rakhmon is re-elected president of the Republic of Tajikistan,” election commission chief told reporters in Dushanbe. With the presidential mandate now seven years, he is due to stay in power until 2020. Rakhmon’s nearest rival, Communist Party candidate Ismoil Talbakov, won just 5pc of the vote. Turnout was an equally overwhelming 86.6pc of voters, the election commission said.
The president - who first came to power amid the chaos of the start of Tajikistan’s civil war in 1992 - now faces the task of coming good on election promises to lift the country bordering Afghanistan out of poverty and end its dire energy shortages.
In a tale all too familiar throughout Muslim but vehemently secular ex-Soviet Central Asia, the five candidates standing against Rakhmon were virtual unknowns even inside the country, each with next to no chance of victory.
The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers said the elections fell short of international standards for democratic polls after a “largely indiscernible” campaign.
“While quiet and peaceful, this was an election without a real choice,” Gordana Comic, Special Co-ordinator of the short-term OSCE observer mission said in Dushanbe.
“Being in power requires abiding by OSCE commitments, not taking advantage of incumbency, as we saw here,” she added.
‘At odds with democratic polls’
The OSCE observers in their report singled out a controversial requirement for candidates to garner 210,000 signatures in ordered to be registered, out of a total electorate of just over four million.
“Restrictive candidacy requirements, as well as the unreasonably high number of supporting signatures required, present significant obstacles that are at odds with OSCE commitments and other international standards for democratic elections,” it said.
This obstacle dispensed with Rakhmon’s most significant potential rival - female rights lawyer Oinikhol Bobonazarova of the moderate opposition Islamic Revival Party of Tajikistan, who was unable to stand after failing to muster enough signatures.
The Islamic Revival Party blamed this on harassment from the local authorities while another main opposition party, the Social Democratic Party, said it boycotted the elections because of “a lack of democracy and transparency”.
Shadowed by the more than 7,000-metre (23,000-feet) high peaks of the Pamir Mountains, Persian-speaking Tajikistan boasts a crucial strategic position, bordering China and Afghanistan, as well as ex-Soviet Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.
Its importance could grow with the pullout of US troops next year from neighbouring Afghanistan, with whom Tajikistan shares a long and porous border.
Rakhmon, 61, who has dropped the Russian ‘ov’ from his name and downgraded the status of Russian in his country, has had tricky relations with Moscow. But this year he agreed to extend the presence of a Russian military base in the country until 2042.
The resource-poor country suffers from chronic energy shortages and is mired in grinding poverty that has left it the poorest ex-Soviet state and forced many to work in Russia, with their remittances providing a crucial contribution to the economy.
The government made a point throughout election day Wednesday of for once not cutting power supplies anywhere in the country as long as polling stations remained open.
Rakhmon made energy independence the key plank of his campaign, in particular ensuring the construction of his vastly ambitious pet project, the Rogun hydroelectric dam, a project has aroused the ire of his number one foe, Uzbek leader Islam Karimov.
After his initial wartime appointment by the Tajik Supreme Soviet in 1992, Rakhmon enjoyed easy re-elections in 1994, 1999 and 2006. Some observers believe he is grooming his eldest son Rustami Emomali Rakhmon to succeed him after 2020.