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Monday 20 May 2024
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LOCAL EDITION
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev speaks during the presidential inauguration ceremony in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Anvar Ilyasov, File)
Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has won a third term that will keep him in charge of the gas-rich Turkic Central Asian state until 2030, according to preliminary results.
The 65-year-old has promised to open up Uzbekistan to foreign investment and tourism and implement key domestic reforms in Central Asia's most populous country.
Mirziyoyev, who was running against three largely unknown candidates, won Sunday's election with 87 percent of the vote, the preliminary results showed.
He previously served as prime minister under his predecessor Islam Karimov before winning his first term in 2016 and getting re-elected in 2021.
A constitutional referendum this year paved the way for him to serve two more presidential terms and increased the mandate from five years to seven, meaning he could stay in power until 2037.
A former Soviet republic, Uzbekistan has a strategic location neighbouring Afghanistan.
'New Uzbekistan'
Mirziyoyev, who trained as an engineer, portrays himself as a reformer creating a "New Uzbekistan" and has said he wants to double the gross domestic product to $160 billion soon.
He focused his re-election campaign on the economy and education.
He has ended the practice of forced labour in Uzbekistan's cotton fields and released political prisoners jailed during Karimov's quarter-century rule.
In July 2022, protests erupted over a plan to remove the right to self-determination from the region of Karakalpakstan.
The unrest and subsequent crackdown in the northwestern territory left at least 21 people dead.
