Incumbent President Shavkat Mirziyoyev won Sunday’s presidential election with 87.05% of the vote, according to preliminary results.
The preliminary results, which are unlikely to differ significantly from the final tally, were announced on Monday at a briefing by Central Election Commission Chairman Zayniddin Nizomxo’jayev.
According to Nizomxo’jayev, 13 million 625 thousand 55 people voted for Mirziyoyev.
A total of 15,651,405 voters took part in the election, representing 79.88% of the 19,593,838 registered voters.
Mirziyoyev’s candidacy was nominated by the UzLiDeP party and supported by the Milliy Tiklanish party.
As we predicted, the other candidates, little known to the general public, received only a few percent each. None of the opposition candidates participated in the election.
Robaxon Maxmudova, nominated by the Social Democratic Party Adolat (Justice), received 4.43% of the vote – 693 thousand 634 people voted for her.
The candidate from the People’s Democratic Party and its leader Ulugbek Inoyatov won 4.02% of the vote – 629 thousand 116 people.
The candidate from the Ecological Party of Uzbekistan Abdushukur Xamzaev won 3.74% of the votes – 585 thousand 711 people.
The number of spoiled ballots was 0.78%.
“The election was held on the basis of international norms and standards and national electoral legislation, in full compliance with such democratic principles as openness, transparency, freedom and fairness, and in high spirits,” said the head of the CEC.
Nizomxo’jayev also announced Shavkat Mirziyoyev as the elected president at the briefing. This was followed by prolonged applause.
Mirziyoyev has been in power for 20 years: 13 years as prime minister under President Islam Karimov, followed by seven years as president after Karimov’s death in 2016. Karimov ruled Uzbekistan for 27 years, until his death at the age of 78.
The “zeroing out” process began in 2021, when Mirziyoyev initiated amendments to Uzbekistan’s Constitution. The new Constitution, adopted this spring, allows Mirziyoyev to reset the clock on his previous presidential terms and extends the presidential term from five to seven years. This means he could remain in power until around 2038, when he will be 79 or 80 years old.
Some wonder why Mirziyoyev decided to hold the election now, given that he still had three and a half years left before the end of his second presidential term. Of course, I cannot know what was behind the decision, but the situation in the world, across the former Soviet Union and inside Uzbekistan itself suggests that conditions in the republic could deteriorate further over the next three and a half years. It is impossible to know how people might react three and a half years from now to another set of official election results.
I did not vote. My friends didn’t either. Although at least three guys brought a vote urn to our house. And to whom else did they bring the ballot box?
