DUSHANBE, May 31, 2013, Asia-Plus  -- Rahmatillo Zoirov, leader of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan (SDPT), does not expect the upcoming presidential election in Tajikistan to be free, transparent and fair.

“By voting down the amendments proposed by the Coalition for Democracy and the Islamic Revival Party (IRP) to the country’s presidential election law, the lower house of the parliament has ruined our hopes for a fair election,” Rahmatillo Zoirov told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him, the Majlisi Namoyandagon (Tajikistan’s lower chamber of parliament) legal department has refused the amendments as “inexpedient”, “because the political parties allegedly are not able to provide the presence of their representatives in all polling stations.” 

“Meanwhile, according statements by the political parties, they have enough members to provide the presence of their representatives in the polling stations,” said SDPT leader.  “Thus, the Socialist Party says it has 18,000 members, the Communist Party – 40,000 members, the Islamic Revival Party – more than 50,000 members, the Party of Economic Reforms – 20,000 members, the Agrarian Party – 30,000 members, and the People’s Democratic Party – 210,000 members.  It turns out that the SDPT is the smallest political party in Tajikistan – we have 7,600 members.  However, I as chairman of the SDPT state that we are able to provide the presence of two our representatives in each of the polling stations (in all, there will be more than 3,500 polling stations).”

We will recall that one of the main amendments proposed to the presidential election law is to provide equal representation of political parties in electoral commissions at all levels.

Founded in 2002, the Social-Democratic Party of Tajikistan was registered on December 20.

The Social-Democratic Party was originally registered as the party of Justice and Development in 1999.  Tajikistan''s Ministry of Justice requested the same year that the Supreme Court ban the party''s activities and its registration was canceled.  The party re-emerged and was registered under its current name in late 2002.