Elections in Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan's parliamentary elections were "characterized by a lively campaign," were competitive and gave voters a wide range of choice, officials of the Organization for Security and Monitoring in Europe (OSCE) said on Monday.

However, "the amount of impartial information available to voters in the news was limited," the observers said. Their concerns included the hurried introduction of biometric registration, problems relating to ballot secrecy, and procedural issues during the vote count, which "tarnished what was a generally smooth election day," they said.

The OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) tweeted this message:

President Almazbek Atambayev's Social Democratic Party came first with around 27 percent of all the votes polled, according to the central election authority in Bishkek. The Social Democrats were followed by a nationalist conservative party with 20 percent votes. Four other parties won more than seven percent of votes and will get a seat in the parliament.

Altogether 14 parties participated in the contest to win seats in the country's 120-seat Supreme Council.

Sunday's polls were the country's second parliamentary election since 2010. At the time, Atambayev toppled autocrat Kurmanbek Bakiyev to make Kyrgyzstan the first parliamentary democracy in Central Asia.

mg/tj (dpa, Reuters)