TASHKENT, Jan 9 (AFP) - Authoritarian Uzbek President Islam Karimov was headed for an overwhelming re-election victory Sunday in a poll that saw his only opponent vote for him.
Karimov - a former Communist Party chief who has ruled the Central Asian nation since its independence in 1991 - has denied he hand-picked a puppet opponent to make his re-election for a new five-year term seem fair. But all pretences were swept away when his "rival," Marxist ideologue Abdulhasiz Dzhalalov, stepped out of the ballot booth and announced he had voted for the better man - Karimov.
"I voted for stability, peace, our nation's independence and for the development of Uzbekistan," Dzhalalov said. "So paradoxical as it may sound, I voted for Islam Karimov."
Asked why he ran in the first place, Dzhalalov replied: "I ran so that democracy would win."
Officials announced that more than half of the 12.1 million eligible voters in this overwhelmingly Muslim country had cast their ballots before noon, forecasting a turnout of more than 90 percent.
Human rights groups have bitterly criticized Karimov for running a Stalinist state in which uncooperative journalists are arrested while opposition parties are simply banned or their members forced into exile.
Opinion polls predicted he would win 99 percent of the ballot.
"We will fight extremism and the expansion of Islamic terrorism," said Karimov as he voted.
Six Muslims sentenced to death by the Uzbek Supreme Court in June for having organized a series of explosions that killed 16 people last February were executed Friday in the run up to the poll.
The president has a powerful weapon to ward off all his opponents, political or otherwise, as the Uzbek constitution forbids "organized activities leading ... to participation in anti-government organizations."
But Karimov, who like many fellow Central Asian rulers has never won less than 88 percent in any poll, went to great pains to make the vote look fair.
His efforts were dealt a blow when the Organization of Security for Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) shunned Sunday's ballot after witnessing a December parliamentary race that saw five pro-president parties compete.
Instead, Karimov shipped in 108 international observers from friendly states such as China, Russia, and Moldovia, giving them all a tsar-like reception and putting them up in the city's only western hotel.
Two such observers, who purported to represent the United States (because they were naturalized citizens and became wealthy businessmen after leaving Uzbekistan), conceded that the new observers would pronounce Sunday's vote democratic.
"This is a country that needs a strong hand. It is only eight years old and I think that the OSCE is rushing things," said observer Boris Kandov, who publishes a small newspaper in New York. "The OSCE just does not understand a turnout figure like 95 percent. They don't understand that to Uzbeks, it is an honor and a celebration to vote for a president."
His New York colleague Nerri Yushvayev-Cavalier added: "People are more responsible here than in the West."
Many people on the streets of Tashkent, a shabby city with collapsing Soviet-built apartment blocks and only vague signs of Western progress, said they liked their president. Some even said he was cute. "He has a pudgy, appealing figure," one women said with a shy laugh.
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