According to information, published by Tajik media, the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Tajikistan won 49 out of 63 seats. The remaining seats were divided among four pro-government parties: the Agrarian Party (7 seats), the Party of Economic Reforms (5 seats), the Socialist Party (1 seat), and the Democratic Party (1 seat).
Since the 2020 elections, the ruling party is up two seats, while the Communist Party of Tajikistan lost its two seats in parliament. The Socialist Party – once an opposition party – for the first time won representation in parliament. Without a single opposition representative in the assembly, the parliament of Tajikistan remains a purely rubber-stamp body, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee said following the elections.
For the first time since the Tajik Civil War, elections in the country took place without an OSCE/ODIHR observer . In February, the OSCE/ODIHR announced it was forced to cancel its monitoring mission after authorities in Tajikistan had failed to provide accreditation to its observers less than a month before the elections.
Authorities also obstructed several media outlets from effectively covering the elections, by denying permission to cover the voting process to outlets such as the BBC and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Tajik service.
The elections took place amidst a deep human rights crisis that has been spiralling downwards in Tajikistan during the last decade. In 2015, the Islamic Renaissance Party of Tajikistan – then the biggest opposition party in all of Central Asia – was ousted from parliament following a flawed election, and later that year forcibly closed down and declared a terrorist organization by the Supreme Court.
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee has documented that authorities in Tajikistan have imprisoned more than 550 individuals on politically motivated charges since 2015. Among them are opposition members, lawyers, human rights defenders, women human rights defenders, journalists, and their family members. Authorities have also liquidated, or otherwise forcibly closed down, hundreds of non-governmental organizations, and have cracked down brutally in the autonomous Gorno-Badakhshan Region.
Just a month before the elections, the Supreme Court issued verdicts in the so-called “coup case” in which eight defendants were tried on charges of “high treason”, “seizure of power” and other charges, according to the Diplomat. Among those sentenced was Shokirjon Khakimov, a former opposition politician and deputy head of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, who received an 18-year prison term. The Supreme Court also sentenced independent journalist and mother of two, Rukhshona Khakimova, to eight years in prison after finding her guilty on treason charges.
Tajikistani authorities routinely persecute political opponents also abroad, and as the elections took place in Tajikistan, Tajik opposition activist Firuz Boboyev was fighting extradition from Türkiye. Boboyev is a member of the Tajik opposition movement “Group 24” which was outlawed by Tajik authorities in 2014 and designated an extremist organization. Last year, two “Group 24” members – Sukhrob Zafar and Nasimjon Sharifov – disappeared under dubious circumstances in Türkiye, before reappearing in detention in Tajikistan. They were subsequently sentenced to 30 and 20 years’ imprisonment. Several other activists, including Abdullohi Shamsiddin, Dilmurod Ergashev and Nizomiddin Nasriddinov and others have been extradited from Europe and subsequently imprisoned in just the last few years.
“With the opposition outlawed and its members in prison, these elections were a meaningless exercise. This is only underlined by the unwillingness of Tajikistani authorities to accommodate independent observers” said Berit Lindeman, Secretary General of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. “We call on authorities in Tajikistan to free political prisoners, allow the peaceful opposition to operate and to facilitate genuine political pluralism in the country”.