DUSHANBE, February 9, 2009, Asia-Plus -- Member of Tajikistan’s ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDPT) has won a February 8 parliamentary by-election in Dushanbe’s Sino district, according to preliminary results.

Muhibullo Dodojonov, an official with the Central Commission for Elections and Referenda (CCER), told Asia-Plus on Monday that according to the preliminary data they have, the PDPT representative Amir Katayev won with 91 percent of the vote, with his opponent, Dodikhudo Abdulloyev of the Islamic Revival Party (IRPT), garnering just 6.7 percent of the vote.

“The Sino constituency numbers 71,292 voters.  According to the preliminary data, 55,393 voters (77.6 percent of the total number of voters) came to ballot boxes yesterday; 50,447 (91 percent) of them voted for Katayev and 3,765 (6.7 percent) voted for Abdulloyev,” the CCER official said. 

We will recall that the by-election was called following appointment of Karimjon Qodirov, who formerly represented the Sino district in the parliament, as Chancellor of Kulob State University.  The ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDPT) nominated Amir Katayev, formerly Chancellor of Tajik Technological University, for the by-election and the IRPT fielded deputy head of the IRPT organization in Dushanbe Dodikhudo Abdyulloyev as its candidate.

In the meantime, the IRPT filed suite against the Sino constituency on January 28.  According to the IRPT spokesman Hikmatullo Sayfullozoda, the district electoral committee refused to include their party representatives in electoral commissions at polling stations, “referring to the parliamentary election law, which does not provide for compulsory representation of all political parties in electoral commissions.”  “While representatives of the PDPT were represented in all 40 electoral commissions at polling stations,” the spokesman said.  He added that they had not received response to their statement of claim.