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Lukashenka congratulates Tajik president on his reelection

 

Alyaksandr Lukashenka has congratulated Emomali Rahmon on his reelection as president of Tajikistan.

“I note with satisfaction the high level of mutual understanding between our states and the dynamic nature of bilateral cooperation, which I am sure will continue to expand and strengthen in the spirit of constructive and mutually beneficial partnership,” the Belarusian leader says in his message, according to the presidential press office.

The 61-year-old Rahmon won a new seven-year term in Wednesday's election, receiving 83.1 percent of the vote, with voter turnout being 86.6 percent, according to Tajikistan's central election commission.

He ran against five little-known and largely loyal candidates after Oynihol Bobonazarova of the Islamic Revival Party, a 65-year-old human rights activist generally regarded as the only real opposition candidate, was prevented from running.

Mr. Rahmon's nearest rival, Ismail Talbakov of the Communist Party, won just five percent of the vote.

Mr. Rahmon, then known as Rakhmonov, became the de facto head of government in 1992 as speaker of parliament at the outset of a bloody civil war that ended in 1997 with an estimated 100,000 deaths, when his predecessors had resigned in an attempt to quell the violence.

On November 6, 1994, Mr. Rahmon was first elected to the newly created post of president. Following constitutional changes, he was reelected on November 6, 1999 to a seven-year term, taking 97 percent of the vote. On June 22, 2003, Mr. Rahmon won a referendum that allowed him to run for two more consecutive seven-year terms after his term expired in 2006. //BelaPAN

Mr. Rahmon was reelected on November 6, 2006 with about 79 percent of the vote in an election that was described by Western observers as neither free nor fair.

Mr. Rahmon survived an assassination attempt in April 1997, as well as two attempted coups in August 1997 and in November 1998.

Some observers believe that he is grooming his eldest son, Rustami Emomali Rahmon, to succeed him after 2020.