Tajikistan's totalitarian elections

As expected, the party of Emomali Rakhmon, who has been at the helm of the country since 1994, obtained an absolute majority and only parties controlled by the president entered parliament. Despite the regime's clearly repressive nature, there are no international sanctions against Tajikistan, confirming the feeling that the ruling caste in Dushanbe is untouchable.

Dushanbe (AsiaNews) - Parliamentary elections were held in Tajikistan on 2 March. According to the Electoral Committee, 85% of voters turned out, 51.9% of whom voted in favour of the Democratic-Popular Party. Members of parliament were also elected from the Agrarian Party (21%), the Democratic Party (5.1%), the Economic Reform Party (12.7%) and the Socialist Party (5.3%), all pro-presidential, while the Communist Party of Tajikistan did not exceed the 5% quorum.

The results obviously confirmed full support for the regime of President Emomali Rakhmon, in office since 1994, when he was chosen as a compromise figure between the neo-communists and the Islamic, nationalist and liberal-democratic forces during the years of the Tajik civil war that raged between 1992 and 1997.

After the fighting he proclaimed himself leader of the People's Democratic Party of Tajikistan, which since then has controlled the parliament and all the political institutions of the country, as also confirmed by the last elections, with the presence of some ‘fringe parties’ and without any real opposition.

Since 2015, Rakhmon has been awarded the title of Pevšoj Millat, which in its full extent indicates the ‘Founder of peace and national unity, Leader of the nation’. He has been elected five times, in 1994, 1999, 2006, 2013 and 2020, and will be again in 2027, unless he decides to pass the scepter to his son Rustam Emomali, currently mayor of Dushanbe and deputy prime minister of the government.

Under the guidance of the Leader, Tajikistan has developed into one of the most authoritarian regimes in the entire ex-Soviet world, with the typical personality cult supported by continuous repression of any form of dissent, minimisation of rights and freedoms, unstoppable corruption and blatant nepotism.

In the last year, just in view of the elections, a show trial was also organised against a number of the country's high-level political figures, held in a courtroom behind closed doors and concluded with a series of very long sentences handed down in early 2025. The convicted men allegedly attempted to organise a coup last summer, an event that nobody in Tajikistan had the slightest inkling of.

Some of the ‘conspirators’ are already elderly, having long since abandoned political activity, and the only offence that has been heard of concerns the private conversations of some of them, during which they allegedly commented on Rakhmon's activities in an ironic and disrespectful manner.

The most prominent of these is Šokirdžon Khakimov, vice-president of the Social Democratic Party of Tajikistan, the only one who actually attempted to openly criticise the government's actions in his comments on Radio Ozodi, which were, however, rather moderate, given his position as a professor of law. He could have left the country a long time ago, but he decided to stay, in the hope of bringing some light into Tajik society, and now he will have to serve an 18-year prison sentence.

Despite the clearly repressive and totalitarian nature of the Rakhmon regime, and his explicit support for the actions of Putin's Russia, neither the president, nor any of his ministers and subordinates have received any kind of international sanction, and the feeling is that the caste in power in Dušanbe considers itself completely untouchable even at an international level. Needless to say, there is no real freedom of the press in Tajikistan: the restrictions on journalists date back to the beginning of the president's reign, and over the last 30 years several of them have died or disappeared in mysterious circumstances.

In 2010, when a number of prisoners made a sensational escape from the capital's maximum security prison, there was explicit criticism of the government in the press, after which everything was silenced, and in the age of digital communications, internet sites and social networks are systematically blocked. According to several observers, the situation is ‘worse than in Afghanistan’.

The members of parliament from the five parties that won seats in these elections are all under the control of the government, and are mainly characterised by their relatively young age, around 40-45 years old, thus belonging to the generation of the president's son who should soon assume the succession to the presidential throne, when he himself will turn 40 in 2027.

The citizens of Tajikistan are no longer interested in politics, and they voted out of simple obedience as subjects, hoping to be able to earn a little extra money, in a very difficult economic situation.