Parliamentary elections in Tajikistan failed...

The observers said numerous irregularities took place during Sunday"s elections, including "a high prevalence of family and proxy voting and cases of ballot box stuffing."

"I"m happy that election day took place in a generally good atmosphere, but I"m even more disappointed that these elections failed on many basic democratic standards," Pia Christmas-Moeller, Special Coordinator of the OSCE short-term observers, said in the statement.

"There is still a long way to go, and hopefully the new parliament will take up this challenge," she said.

A total of 3,102,073 voters voted at 3,067 polling stations in Tajikistan.

Tajikistan"s top election body declared the election in the ex-Soviet republic valid, with the country"s electoral threshold being 50% plus one vote.

The polls were monitored by more than 25,000 local and about 540 international observers, representing the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly and the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human

Pages: [1] 2