KYRGYZSTAN:President Kurmanbek Bakiyev's party won every seat in Kyrgyzstan's next parliament, early results showed yesterday after a weekend election sharply criticised by western monitors and the opposition.
The tiny ex-Soviet state, home to both US and Russian military bases, has been volatile since Mr Bakiyev came to power in 2005 when a string of violent protests triggered by a disputed election toppled his long-serving predecessor, Askar Akayev.
If final results confirm the outcome, Mr Bakiyev's Ak Zhol party would be unchallenged in the 90-seat chamber, ruling in a one-party system that marks a break from Kyrgyzstan's past as the most liberal state among more authoritarian Central Asian countries.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which sent more than 250 observers for the election, said the vote represented a "missed opportunity" to show commitment to international standards.
"The parliamentary elections . . . failed to meet a number of OSCE commitments," said Kimmo Kiljunen, the head of the OSCE observer mission. "I'm personally disappointed there is now a backslide in the election process." The OSCE mission said it had registered cases of ballot stuffing and other violations.
But, despite accusations of irregularities, many people said they voted for Ak Zhol, seeing it as a guarantor for stability following years of political turbulence.
Ak Zhol won 48 per cent of Sunday's vote, the central election commission said yesterday, citing results after 80 per cent of votes had been counted.
"It'll most likely be a one-party system," said Toktogul Kakchekeyev, an independent political analyst.
The opposition Ata Meken party was the only other party to pass the threshold of 5 per cent, with 9.3 per cent. But it failed to meet a separate requirement of taking 0.5 per cent of the vote in each of Kyrgyzstan's seven regions and two main cities.
Ata Meken's chances of getting in now depend on a supreme court hearing today into the legality of the 0.5 per cent hurdle - a complicated system also criticised by the OSCE.
"If we applied Kyrgyz thresholds to Finland, not a single party would get into parliament," said Mr Kiljunen.
The opposition condemned the election as rigged. "The authorities . . . are just cynically appointing their own people into parliament," said Kubatbek Baibolov of the Ata Meken party. "It will lead to trouble. People feel deceived." The previous parliamentary election in 2005, also disputed by the opposition, sparked violent protests.
Ak Zhol says it sees Russia - where the president's party controls more than two-thirds of seats in parliament - as a guiding model.