Uzbek President Islam Karimov was reelected with 88.1 percent of vote in Sunday's polls, according to preliminary results announced by the Central Election Commission on Monday.

 

 

Uzbek President Islam Karimov. He was reelected with 88.1 percent of vote in Sunday's polls, according to preliminary results announced by the Central Election Commission on Dec. 24, 2007.

 

Karimov won a new seven-year term by a landslide, leaving his three opponents to gain three percent of the vote each.

 

"Preliminary results showed that the election was conducted in accordance with the constitution," Mirzoulugbek Abdusalomov, head of the Central Election Commission, said after the election.

 

The polls opened at 6 a.m. (0100 GMT) and closed at 8 p.m. (1500 GMT) Sunday in the Central Asian country of 28 million people.

 

More than 14.765 million eligible voters cast their ballots in 8,266 polling stations, exceeding the 33 percent needed to make the vote valid.

 

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Europe's top election monitoring body, sent a group of observers to monitor the voting.

 

Karimov, 69, became the president of the Republic of Uzbekistan in 1991.He won a reelection in 2000.

 

(Xinhua News Agency December 25, 2007)