According to one election observer, only Talbakov can be considered a more or less serious candidate, with support among the economically hard-hit elderly and the remaining Slavic community in Tajikistan.

The candidates had to collect 160,000 signatures (equivalent to 5 percent of the Tajik population) to be considered for registration by the CEC. This is a rather high figure; the OSCE/ODIHR, which will be monitoring the election, advises to lower the barrier of necessary signatures for registration to 1 percent of the electorate.

Still, the government seems to be trying to make the elections appear fair and honest. All candidates will get 30 minutes on state television to make his case for the presidency (president Rahmonov can be seen much more often on television because the media pay minute attention to his daily doings) and international observers and foreign media have been invited to monitor the elections. But observers and media representatives must register no later than 20 days before the elections, which, according to the OSCE, creates obstacles for short-term observers.

Tajikistan is expecting more than 700 international observers, more than 100 of whom are with the OSCE. It will be the first time that the OSCE will be monitoring presidential elections in Tajikistan. It earlier monitored the parliamentary elections of 2000 and 2005, which were deemed to fall short of OSCE standards. Other observers come mainly from the CIS. There will also be some 18,000 local observers, according to the CEC.

But many people still think their vote will change nothing – and plan to stay at home on election day instead. A 20-year-old student of the capital’s Agrarian University says he won’t vote – and neither will most of his friends and relatives. “I’m sure that even if all Tajik people agreed not to vote for the current president, he would win again”. When asked why he does not want to vote for an alternative candidate, he cynically said: “What is the sense? When somebody reaches power in our country, even if it is a new person, he will do the same things [to steal] money.”

A 30-year-old entrepreneur is of much the same opinion. “I haven’t voted in the last four elections and I won’t vote now. It doesn’t matter what you do. They will always claim that turnout was very high.”

The Democratic Party and Social-Democratic Party call the upcoming elections illegal, claiming that according to the constitution, one and the same person can’t be elected more than twice to the presidency. And Rahmonov was elected in 1994 and 1999. Supporters of the president however say Rahmonov can run two more times after the constitution was changed in 2003, with a “clean slate”.

The Islamic Renaissance Party has not nominated a candidate, not to damage Tajikistan’s international reputation: “We did not want to place our country and our party at the front line of criticism that Islamic movements are very active here,” the party’s leader, Muhiddin Kabiri, told the Tajik Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The candidates who do take part in the election are not very visible. Apart from small election posters at bus stands (and one big one of Rahmonov in the centre of town) there is hardly any agitation, and no excitement – except when on 9 October five internet sites that carried information critical of the government were blocked. Subsequently, on 12 October three of them, including www.ferghana.ru, were made available again. But the incident adds weight to the expectations of one election observer that the upcoming vote, again, will not reach OSCE standards.