Photograph by Flickr user Greenwich Photography (CC-usage).

As voting day (28 February 28) approaches, I’m starting to think there might actually be a free and fair election in my country — something which has never happened before despite many high-level promises and international criticisms.

All the previous elections were unfair and full of fraud.  My countrymen would joke that Tajikistan has the most transparent election in the world in that the victor could already be seen without even counting the votes.  We wonder why we even bother voting at all.

But this year may be different.  According to the Central Election Commission, 225 candidates will fight for 63 seats in the Majlisi Namoyandagon (lower house). 41 of them are registered in single-mandate constituencies and 22 will be chosen on a party basis.

Compare: the current Majlis has only two members from the Islamic Revival Party, four members from the Communist Party.  The rest are members of the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan.

So, if nothing else, the parliament resulting from this election will probably be colorful, to say the least.

In the shadow of Roghun

There were no signs of the imminent election on the streets until recently.   Small funding was one reason.  Independent political parties and candidates are not rich enough to make big election noises. International NGOs helped them in previous elections.  However, these have been inactive during this election, probably because of disappointment with earlier results.

However, the big reason is that the election has been overshadowed by the Roghun project.  All the state-controlled television channels show the satisfied faces of new shareholders and state servicemen.  Also, the fundraising campaign could be an attempt to rebuild the confidence of the electorate in the main party.  It would be a populist tactic, and possibly a risky one.

Indeed, some experts say that this election should be seen as a kind of “exam” of Rahmon.  Perhaps the ruling circle needs people of different political partners in the Roghun project to help shore up its legitimacy.  As it happens, all of the opposition parties have already signaled their support for the project.*

Guarantees, please

The electorate is looking for guarantees against the problems of the past, including interference by state officials, the abuse of administrative resources, unequal access to media for favored candidates, double-balloting and other irregularities.

This election will be monitored by approximately 540 observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, foreign countries, and several international organizations.

Additionally, according to the Election Law of Tajikistan, independent political parties and candidates have the right to appoint local observers to monitor the voting process in polling places.

So there’s an impressive amount of attention from both inside and outside Tajikistan on the balloting process.  However, in the past the complaints have focused less on ballot collection as on the vote count itself.  Reportedly, votes for this or that candidate get re-assigned to favored individuals.

As the Americans say, let’s keep our fingers crossed (for good luck).

*Author’s note: Interestingly, the Uzbek opposition has gotten into the mix.  The Democratic Movement of Uzbekistan and the exiled Uzbek Birlik Movement, who normally oppose anything and everything of Karimov, have stated their solidarity with him against the Roghun project.

This may also account for the Tajik opposition’s uniformity around Rahmon.  Indeed, the Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan even offered its seats in parliament to defend the Roghun project.