Rahmonov, who previously won elections described as flawed by international observers with figures in the high 90 percentile, was trailed by the little-known leader of the Economic Reforms Party, Olimjon Boboev, who received 6.2 percent of the votes. Of the other candidates, the leader of the Agrarian Party, Amir Karakulov, received 5.3 percent, Ismoil Talbakov of the Communist Party 5.1 percent, and the head of the pro-government wing of the Socialist Party Abdukhalim Gafarov, finished at 2.8 percent.

Election day was calm and peaceful all over the country and felt more like a holiday than a political contest. And, in fact, 6 November also was a holiday: the day of the Tajik Constitution, which thanks to the election was more active than usual.

Early in the morning, polling stations in the center of Dushanbe were full of people who seemed eager to vote. The smiling head of one polling station said even before 11 o’clock in the morning that about 300 of the 900 voters registered with his precinct had voted. Other precincts cited similar high turnouts in the early hours.

Missions from the CIS and OSCE observed the election – this was the first time that the OSCE observed presidential elections in Tajikistan – but arrived at different conclusions. The CIS mission believed the election was “free, open and transparent”. According to the OSCE, however, “a lack of genuine choice and meaningful pluralism” hindered the holding of a truly democratic election reaching OSCE standards.

The organization acknowledged that this presidential election marked some improvements compared with the previous one, held in 1999. This does not mean they were flawless, of course. Proxy voting and family voting was a widespread and serious problem during the elections, said the OSCE: in almost half of the polling stations visited by their international observers, voter lists contained identical signatures. Also, voters’ identities were frequently not checked and some voter turnout figures were “improbably high”.

The OSCE election mission was also prevented from observing the aggregation of results from all district polling stations at the relevant District Elections Commissions (DEC) in two-thirds of the 47 DECs it observed.

At the November 7 OSCE/ODIHR press-conference, some journalists from the CIS seemed not to agree with the OSCE conclusions and asked why the OSCE did not take into account the “local mentality and history” when deciding whether the election was free and fair or not.

Whether totally free and fair or not, the election was not much of a test for the popularity of Rahmonov. The two major opposition parties, the Democratic Party and the Social-Democratic Party, boycotted the election while the Islamic Renaissance Party failed to field a candidate. The fact that there were no serious challengers to Rahmonov raises the question how serious an exercise the election really was.

Rahmonov’s four challengers were dependent on state support for their campaigning, the OSCE noted. The four participated in a joint campaign organized by the election administration. They had free space in state newspapers and time for broadcasts on state television – but the candidates did not fully use this opportunity. And, writes the OSCE in its Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions, the four candidates “not only refrained from challenging and criticizing their opponent, they actually endorsed the abilities of the incumbent president”. This, in the words of the BBC, fuelled suspicions “that at least some of them were chosen by the authorities” – to give the vote the appearance, but not the substance, of democracy.

However, if there had been no irregularities during and before the election, the result of the vote would probably by and large have been the same, the OSCE believes. A survey carried out by the organization before the election showed that over 80 percent of the voters were going to cast their ballot for Rahmonov. Perhaps this would have been less if there had been more challenging candidates. But although the majority of Tajiks remain very poor, living on an average salary of $10-20 per month, many are grateful to Rahmonov for ending the 1992-97 civil war.

Nilufer, a 24-year-old student, also supported Rahmonov for this reason. “[The war] was a terrible time, when every day somebody among the people I knew disappeared and my family, as well as all others, was always hungry”.

A new generation of voters, who won’t remember the war, might be less willing for this reason to vote for Rahmonov, who thanks to a 2003 amendment to the constitution could theoretically remain president of Tajikistan until 2020.