The current president of Uzbekistan is elected for the third time

The current President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev won the presidential election for the third time, gaining 87% of the vote. The voter turnout was 79.8%, the Central Election Commission of Uzbekistan announced on July 10. The elections were held ahead of schedule after the amendments to the Constitution following a referendum in May. They provided for the resetting of Mirziyoyev’s terms and increasing them from five to seven years. Now Mirziyoyev can theoretically be the head of state until 2037.

Representatives of the CIS Interparliamentary Assembly highly appreciated the level of voting organization. And observers from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) noted that the election campaign was “sluggish” and reflected “lack of opposition to the incumbent.”

After the announcement of the preliminary results of the vote, Mirziyoyev was congratulated on the victory by the heads of the Central Asian republics, the leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation with his Uzbek counterpart, confirmed “the mutual disposition for the further comprehensive development of friendly Russian-Uzbek relations on the principles of alliance and strategic partnership.”

The nomination of the incumbent as a candidate for the post of head of state was supported by the pro-presidential Liberal Democratic Party (UzLiDeP, 53 seats out of 150 seats in the lower house of parliament) and the Milliy Tiklanish Democratic Party (37 mandates). In addition to Mirziyoyev, three candidates from formally opposition parties also took part in the voting. The representative of the Social Democratic Party “Adolat”, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Court Robakhon Makhmudova won 4.4% of the vote. The leader of the left-wing People’s Democratic Party (PDP), former education minister Ulugbek Inoyatov received a little less – 4%. Finally, the candidate from the Ecological Party Abdushukur Khamzaev won only 3.7%.

During his election campaign, the incumbent promised to double the country’s GDP to $160 billion by 2030. To achieve these targets, Mirziyoyev said that in the near future the state plans to launch joint projects with foreign investors worth $115 billion. In addition, he promised to provide all settlements with clean drinking water, build an additional 1 million apartments and spend $1 billion on the education system over the next seven years.

Mirziyoyev was first elected to the presidency in 2016 with 88.6%. In the previous vote in 2021, the incumbent received 80%, while his rival, opposition PDP candidate Maksud Varisov, received only 6.6%.

Early presidential elections marked the intermediate completion of the political cycle, they record the political and economic transformations carried out by Mirziyoyev since 2016, says Daria Chizhova, general director of the Information and Analytical Center for the Study of the Post-Soviet Space at Moscow State University. According to the expert, the elections were in fact a referendum on confidence in Mirziyoyev.

It is significant that not only UzLiDeP, but also Milliy Tiklanish, the party of moderate nationalists, supported the candidacy of the incumbent head of state, Chizhova continues: “Before that, they nominated their candidate in different elections. This is an important marker that speaks of the political unity and importance of Mirziyoyev in the absence of real competition, and an indicator that the presidential course laid down in 2016 will be implemented more actively.”

Chizhova explained that Mirziyoyev’s approach is fundamentally different from the policy of Islam Karimov, the first president of Uzbekistan. According to her, the current head has set a course for the openness of the economy, the modernization of the political system, and the improvement of the quality of human capital. And these goals, the expert continues, require long-term investments, for which the Constitution was reformed, fixing the configuration of the political system. “Therefore, one should not expect any changes in the country’s domestic and foreign policy,” Chizhova added.

In foreign policy, Tashkent will continue the policy of deep cooperation with all the countries of Central Asia, political scientist Abdugani Mamadazimov believes. “Mirziyoyev transformed the foreign policy of Islam Karimov, under which the country did not always get along with its neighbors. Today, Uzbekistan has settled border issues with Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and even Turkmenistan,” the expert noted. According to Mamadazimov, Uzbekistan is a “central” state bordering all the countries of Central Asia. Due to their geography, the Uzbek authorities will continue to promote the creation of joint transport and logistics projects in order to subsequently become the main connecting hub in the region, the expert concluded.